


Absolution

by leviosaphoenix



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-07-19 01:34:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7339228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviosaphoenix/pseuds/leviosaphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been two years since the Atom invented a plague that wiped out most of Starling City. With a ruthless government agency in control, and a hooded vigilante fighting to shut the Atom down, Felicity Smoak quickly learns that life post-apocalypse isn’t exactly like it seemed in movies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story can be entirely blamed on a few things: firstly, Courts, who started throwing zombie headcanons at me back in October, despite all the times I told her how deathly afraid I am of them. Secondly, The Last of Us and The CW's Containment, the latter of which started WELL after I'd gotten my teeth into this, but nevertheless inspires much of the content further down the line. Thirdly, thatmasquedgirl, with whom I have had the AMAZING privilege of working in recent months, both on her stories and on mine. I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am now without her. 
> 
> M rating for possible gore and violence, just to be safe.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re going to get us killed, Smoak.”

There are things in life that you take for granted.

The fresh breeze blowing in from the sea, the warm sun on your back, the sound of the rain tapping at the window – they’re all things that seem mundane.

The truth is, I would give anything to be able to experience that freedom again. In the compound, the air is recycled and artificial, the light comes from fluorescent strips in the ceiling, and weather is a memory long forgotten by most.

“Felicity, there’s movement in sector seven.”

I shake myself from my reverie, quickly pulling up surveillance on the wall of screens in front of me.

“Scanning,” I confirm, nodding at my second-in-command, Cisco. “Hold and prepare retrieval protocols.”

Eyes glued to the footage, we watch the single heat signature crawl out from behind a dumpster. She was probably no older than twelve, her hair matted with dirt and blood.

I felt the sinking in my heart a moment before the whistle of the machine, the software I’d written flashing with the word _Corrupted_.

Beside me, Cisco swears violently before radioing in to S.I.

“Corrupted confirmed.” He glances at me, knowing that two operatives need to give the order before it can be executed.

“Confirmed,” I echo.

Before I can look away, a shot rings out, striking the girl in the head. I dry heave over a trashcan, trying to wipe the amalgam of blood and flesh and brains from my mind.

“Target sanitized,” a bored voice tells us, and I quickly change the screens as Cisco pats my back sympathetically.

“It doesn’t get any easier,” I tell him, wiping at my eyes in frustration.

He shrugs. “Good. That means you’re still human.”

<\-----<<

It began slowly, with isolated reports of rabies outbreaks in various hospitals, a neighbor having a psychotic break. Little by little, the way a dam wall lets a few trickles through before it gives in, it started to spread, take hold.

The dam burst on May 11th, 2012. Where before there had been only a few hundred cases, thousands upon thousands took to the streets, bathing them in blood beneath an overcast sky. Some tried to flee, only to find the highways between towns blocked by the military. They died in a wave of gunfire and a swarm of Corrupted.

I hid in a storm shelter, alone, for a week. I was terrified of what lay on the outside – whether I would find mindless killers, or whether I was the only person left alive. Then, I heard the sirens, as a top-secret government group called A.R.G.U.S. combed through the wreckage, searching for survivors.

The day I was brought in, all I was told was how lucky I was. The cavalry was here; there was no reason to be afraid anymore.

I didn’t feel so lucky when they roughly sheared off my hair, leaving it uneven at barely shoulder-length, or when they stripped me of my clothing and tossed them into the biohazard disposal unit to be burned. I was forced to take a decontamination shower with five other strangers before being handed an ill-fitting beige uniform made of lightweight cotton.

I didn’t feel so lucky when the rationing system was explained, or when I was shown the dorms – two sets of triple bunks and one tiny dresser between them. I didn’t feel so lucky when I was assigned to the Technology Sentinel division, or TechSent, usually only tasked with finding others for A.R.G.U.S. to capture or destroy. It wasn’t lucky at all to have survived the initial outbreak – the greater plague, the silent killer, was the ruthless hand that now had control of all the puppet strings.

There’s a point, maybe six months into your new life in an underground bunker, where you wonder where you’re going with all this. Are the next fifty, sixty years of your existence going to be spent in these reinforced steel chambers, mindlessly following orders? Or will supplies run out, will water sources become contaminated, and then that’s the way it ends?

After two years, no major progress has been made. There is still neither cure nor inoculation. Things look bleak for the remnants of Starling City.

I’m starting to think that we don’t have anything left to lose.

<\-----<<

When the people around you are dying without apparent cause, fear and anger become a deadly, two-headed viper. The public needed to assign blame, needed the hatred to mask the pain of grief. Naturally, once someone pointed the finger at Starling’s ‘first family’ of sorts, the others followed suit.

_“I believe I may have been complicit… The sickness that has gripped this city may have originated from Queen Consolidated’s own Applied Sciences division. Please be assured, we have all our best scientists working on synthesizing a cure, and the company is donating all resources to the prevention of disease in the community…”_

_Moira Queen’s words are lost to the shouts of anger and indignation from the gathered crowd._

_Oliver Queen stands at her side, his face dark like a storm. Once free to roam the city as he pleased, breaking the hearts of Starling’s eligible women wherever he went, the Queen name was cursed as soon as the rumors of the outbreak began to fly. His arm is wrapped around his younger sister, only her mop of brown curls visible._

_Robert Queen is nowhere to be found, no doubt at his office trying to deal with the fallout._

Of course, that was before the man known only as the Atom stepped forward and claimed responsibility for the plague. It was too late to clear the Queen name – all four of them had perished in the second wave of illness.

The Atom claimed that he had built technology so small it could be absorbed into the bloodstream. His _nanobots_ , as he called them, could then travel all the way to the brain. It could diagnose and cure illnesses, repair microscopic injuries to brain or nerve tissue, perform miracles beyond man’s wildest dreams.

Of course, nobody believed in robots too small to be seen, so this was his grand demonstration and sales pitch to the world’s billionaires. He programmed his tech to attack the brain, take control of the nervous system, and cause people to kill one another in fits of insanity. The tech spread through any contact with body fluids – mainly blood and saliva.

Thus, the Atom pitched his product. The higher the body count, the higher the interest. Our only hope is to prevent the technology from falling into, well, _more_ wrong hands.

We’ve been tracking the movements of one of the Atom’s men for several weeks now – all our intel indicates that Cooper Seldon is likely to be the link between buyer and seller, so we just have to intercept the deal. Cisco, who heads up the Technology Sentinel department with me, is following Seldon’s progress through what was once the business district of Starling City.

“This is it,” Cisco says, his typing growing increasingly rapid. “Look – Digger Harkness, Chien Na Wei, Isabel Rochev, they’ve all sent proxies to this location. I count maybe two dozen heat signatures, all clean.”

“I’ll alert Harbinger,” I respond. “Pull up blueprints; we need all exits locked down.”

It’s almost too easy to intercept the feeds and run facial recognition on the prospective buyers, tap out quick messages to Harbinger’s team about the weaponry I can identify. This is the kind of work I signed up for with A.R.G.U.S. – taking down bad guys, pruning terrorism at the roots.

One of my cameras picks up an odd shadow, and I silently enhance the image. UnCorrupted, over six feet, face obscured: my suspicions are confirmed.

“Cisco, he’s there.”

Cisco peers at my screen and cringes. “We should alert Harbinger.”

“No! Wait,” I murmur. “Hold them back a sec. I want to see what he does.”

The shadow disappears from the shot, but I track him from camera to camera as he prowls, clearly mapping out his vantage points and exits.

“Felicity,” Cisco warns, tapping his headset.

“Just wait!”

Almost as if on cue, the shadow lifts a heavy compound bow and looses several arrows towards the gathered criminals. Several fall while others lift guns and shots ring out, but the archer is too swift, too clever.

I hear Cisco give Harbinger the go ahead and the building is stormed by A.R.G.U.S. agents in full tactical gear, but Seldon fights his way past and is almost clear of the exit before an arrow takes him down.

Amanda Waller - head of A.R.G.U.S. – blazes into the TechSent room, cursing into her comm.

“I want him eliminated,” she spits, dark eyes flashing. “Do you hear me, Harbinger? He does not leave this building alive.”

My eyes are glued to the screen, though, and I know it’s too late. The mysterious archer is long gone, his objective complete, and as much as Waller would have my head for it, I’m glad he escaped.

A.R.G.U.S. may be the controlling force in what’s left of Starling, but there are several small groups of survivors out there who have evaded both capture and illness. The vigilante is undoubtedly from one of these groups, and he shows up often on my radar, interfering with Waller’s operations and capturing Corrupted with non-lethal force. It infuriates her for two reasons: firstly, because she despises unpredictable third parties in this post-apocalyptic war, and secondly, because she deems anyone who doesn’t sanitize a Corrupted a sympathizer.

Rumors began to spread months ago that, although the infection couldn’t be cured, it could run its course in the human body and victims of the plague could recover. If these rumors have any weight to them, Waller could be held responsible for thousands of deaths and the civilians protected by A.R.G.U.S. could revolt. The Sanitation Initiative exists only because there is no cure for the infection, and any suggestion that this was unwarranted genocide is something Waller wants stamped out.

Me? I believe the archer is someone I’d want on my side. He could be a valuable asset, and we’ll never know until we get a chance to communicate without the overtures of gunfire.

However, I’m just a lowly TechSent employee. I don’t get to make the calls.

Waller curses again, and gives both Cisco and I venomous looks. “How did we not know he was there?” she demands.

We remain silent, and I’m grateful that I can trust Cisco not to give me up.

“Track him. He so much as breathes in our direction, I want to know about it.” Without another word, she storms out of the room, and Cisco lets out a relieved sigh.

“You’re going to get us killed, Smoak,” he groans, turning back to his screens. I ignore him, pulling up city maps and adding his last location info to my algorithm.

I’ve been secretly tracking the archer since the first time we spotted him, and I might just have gotten the final hint I need to find him.

It’s time to pay this vigilante a visit.

<\-----<<

It’s long after lights-out when I slip out of the compound, easily disabling the security and ducking down a long steel tunnel. A.R.G.U.S. operates in the old subway network of Starling, now that the surface is no longer a safe place to inhabit. I stole some gear from S.I., allowing me to step out of the rabbit warren for the first time in two years.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m terrified. I know where each camera operates in each sector, but I’m still worried that one of the night crew will spot me. Corrupted activity is low in this area, but that doesn’t mean I can relax my guard. I’m grateful for the thick combat boots I’m wearing as I wade through the blood and filth that lines the streets.

After what feels like hours, I reach my destination – a shadowed alley behind an old nightclub where the cameras were destroyed by fire and never replaced. Of all the blind spots in the city, this seems the most likely according to my calculations of the archer’s travel times and sightings. The smell of death is less acrid here, as if someone who lives nearby has removed or buried the bodies of the Corrupted to limit the likelihood of disease.

“You are either very brave, or very stupid,” a heavily disguised voice growls at me from the shadows.

I spin around, searching the darkness for movement, but come up with nothing. “I’m looking for the archer. I’m alone and unarmed.”

“A dangerous state to be in these days,” the voice replies, and then I see him, on the roof, crouched over the old Verdant sign, his head bowed under his green hood.

“I work for A.R.G.U.S.-”

“I know who you are, Felicity Smoak,” he replies. “You don’t attempt to hack my systems and scrape by unnoticed.”

“Waller wants you dead. She doesn’t like players she can’t control.”

“And why are _you_ here looking for me, _Felicity_?” He draws my name out and my skin turns to gooseflesh.

Steeling myself, I take a deep breath. “I want to help you.”

“Why should I trust you when your bosses want me eliminated?”

“I’m tired of living under Waller’s thumb. I’m tired of standing by as innocent people are murdered. There has to be another way, and it seems like you’re the only one out there looking for it.”

“I’ve worked alone this long.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have to anymore,” I retort.

I can’t see his face, but I imagine his expression is curious as he watches me for a long moment before giving me a short nod.

“I need all the data your medical team has on the infection. They have several Corrupted in captivity. I want to know how the symptoms manifest, if they get any more or less severe over time. Can you access that information?”

I bite my lip. “I know someone, but it won’t be easy.”

“Be careful,” he says, inclining his head. “If you are as willing to help me as you claim, it’ll be useful to have you on the inside.”

There’s a scuffling noise around the corner and in one fluid motion he drops with his back to me, his bow drawn. “Go. Meet me back here in three days with the intel.”

A Corrupted stumbles into view, eyes blank and hair matted with dirt. The archer fires a quick, buzzing arrow and the body drops with a soft thud.

“What are you waiting for?” he snarls, looking at me over his shoulder. Even in the dim light, I can see his eyes are an almost iridescent blue.

I turn and run, my heart pounding as I try to remember the way back. One false step and I’ll be making an appearance on TechSent cameras, but I’ve already been out in the open too long. For all I know, one of my roommates has noticed my empty bunk and raised the alarm.

By some miracle, I make it back to the compound and arm the door without further incident. I shed the stolen S.I. uniform and hide it in a broken ventilation unit, wrinkling my nose at the smell coming off the soles of the boots. Luckily for me, the maintenance crew got lazy in this corner of the compound.

Padding back to the dorms in my sock feet, the adrenaline begins to wear off and my heart returns to a normal pace. I relax too early, though, because I turn down the wrong corridor and barrel straight into a uniformed guard.

“Oh my God!” I exclaim. “You’re _huge_.”

“ID, please,” he grumbles, looking suspiciously like our collision roused him from a standing doze.

“Oh, yep, wait one sec…” I dig frantically through my pockets and for one terrifying moment think I’ve left it behind with the hidden S.I. gear – _damn it, Felicity_ – before I tug it out and wave it in his face.

“Alright, Smoak, what are you doing in a restricted area after lights-out?”

“Night duty,” I lie blithely. “Just checking the security systems at Gate F and took a wrong turn.”

He frowns down at my TechSent ID again, then purses his lips as he hands it back to me. “Okay. Don’t come down here again without authorisation. This is the imprisonment sector. Have a nice…” His eyes fall on my very shoeless feet.

 _This is it_ , I tell myself, but the guard – his ID says Diggle – just blinks.

“Could be anything on the floors around here,” he mumbles, and blessedly turns away.

Unable to believe my luck, I sprint back to my dorm without even pausing, slipping in and diving into my bunk in perfect silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [hides face in shame] I am SO sorry for being MIA all this time. I will resume work on Something I Need, as soon as inspiration strikes. I promise not to leave it unfinished, even if it kills me.
> 
> I'm hoping to maintain weekly updates; that said, I will be at SDCC this year(!), so there may be a brief hiatus in July (with good reason).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter! Thanks for the feedback last week; I'm super excited that you guys love the concept so far. Again, I'd like to thank thatmasquedgirl for helping me pull this story together and always being one step ahead of my brain. I'm extremely lucky to be able to work with someone so gifted.

If there’s one good thing that’s come out of being in this underground prison, it’s meeting Cisco and Caitlin.

Before the city fell, I was never much of a social butterfly. Sure, I’d grab a drink with a college friend if she were in town, and I got along with my co-workers at the Buy-More, but Pre-Apocalypse Felicity was more at home with a stack of books and a Netflix account than in a crowd of people.

After my first few months in TechSent, Cisco Ramon was assigned to my unit, and it was like I’d finally found someone who spoke my language. On even the most grim days underground, he still has a way of lightening the mood. He’d been recruited with his best friend, a medical researcher named Caitlin Snow.

The three of us became inseparable, often ignored or even ridiculed for our intelligence by other civilians in the compound. It’s comforting to feel like we still had a shred of normalcy left in this forsaken, ravaged world, even if it is the equivalent of a high school hierarchy.

Caitlin, of course, is my key to unlocking the archer’s secrets. She has been studying the disease under the lead A.R.G.U.S. scientists. If I can convince her to pass on the information I need, or even just conveniently, _accidentally_ leave a door open, maybe I’ll have a chance of convincing the vigilante I could be useful to his cause.

“I need a favor.”

“Why do I have a feeling this favor is going to get us killed?” Caitlin asks, wrinkling her nose while poking at a questionable potato with a fork.

Glancing around warily at the other tables in the mess hall, I’m reassured nobody is listening too closely. “I need you to load some data on a secure, untraceable flash drive I’ve developed,” I whisper, reaching under the table to press the tiny fob into her hand.

“What kind of data?”

“Everything you’ve got on the infection.”

Caitlin sits back in her chair and shakes her head. “No. No way. Sorry, Felicity, but it’s not possible.”

Cisco frowns at me. “Why do you need it?”

“I… can’t tell you. It’s better if you don’t know. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important,” I continue, turning beseeching eyes on Caitlin again.

“Look, I don’t even have the clearance for that kind of information,” she sighs. “It’s all restricted, and I have to put in requests to access any of it.”

That, coupled with the fact it took me two days to finish the drive and get my friends somewhere we wouldn’t be overheard, means I only have one day to implement plan B.

“I’ll hack the database, then.” Caitlin and Cisco both begin to protest, but I hold up a hand to silence them. “Look, if you leave the terminal unlocked, I can get in undetected. It’ll take four minutes, tops. They’ll never know you were involved.”

“What if you get caught?” Cisco demands.

“I won’t,” I say, confidently.

Caitlin passes the drive back to me, her expression a mixture of awe and reproach. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

They push back from the table, empty trays in hand, and I stare into my untouched meal as fear creeps its way into my stomach. “So do I.”

<\-----<<

The heist, as I refer to it in my head, goes off without a hitch. Caitlin leaves a sliver of plastic wedged in the lock, making it appear like she swiped her pass and left the room secure in accordance with protocol. It takes six minutes for me to get into the terminal, copy all the encrypted files using a phantom of Waller’s own credentials, and wipe away all evidence that the system was even breached. I stash the drive with my hidden S.I. uniform, tucked in the toe of a boot.

That night, my hands are shaking so much that it takes three tries to disarm the door. The stench of death in the streets of Starling is more acrid than I remember, causing bile to rise in my throat more than once. I work my way slowly, cautiously to the same alley, hoping the archer will show. He hasn’t appeared on any radar since the other night, and I hope this doesn’t mean he’s been taken out, either by Corrupted or A.R.G.U.S. forces.

“Felicity.”

I suppress my urge to shriek at his sudden appearance in the shadowy doorway of Verdant. “You know, it’s not exactly fair that you know my name while I don’t know yours.”

“Dead men don’t have names,” he replies, with almost a trace of humour behind it. “Quick, inside.”

The entrance he gestures to looks sealed, boarded up with rotted planks, bloodstains sunk deep into the wood. He pushes it open, however, revealing a dark corridor leading to a steel door, not unlike the ones in the compound.

“Guess this nightclub isn’t as abandoned as it looks,” I remark, swallowing hard.

He silently lets me in and seals the door behind us. Steps lead down to a basement room, clean but dimly lit, a weapons case in one corner and a tray of medical equipment beside the surgical table in another.

“This is your base?” I ask in surprise, spying a pallet of blankets behind a heavy, wrought-iron chest.

“I have others,” he responds, but doesn’t elaborate.

“How do you know you can trust me enough to bring me in here?”

He studies me, his eyes sharp beneath the mask. “Two reasons. First, if you’d told Waller where you’d found me, this whole block would have already been burned to the ground.” He says it in a way that makes it clear he’d prepared for this outcome.

“What’s the second reason?”

He says nothing, instead turning away to a small desk equipped with a computer. “Do you have it?”

“Yes.” I hold out the flash drive, barely the size of a fingernail, and under the shadow of his hood I can see the corner of his mouth twitch.

“How do you know you can trust _me_?” he echoes, softly, but he takes the drive in his gloved hand without waiting for an answer.

He’s adept with the computer, pulling up the files and using a decryption key with a distinctive signature.

“Canary?” I ask, pointing at the little bird footprint embedded in the code. Several months ago, I’d encountered that signature when a hacker had tried to breach A.R.G.U.S. systems. They were quick, but had lacked finesse, and quickly retreated when I’d blocked them out.

“An associate of mine,” the archer admits, reluctantly.

I want to ask more questions, but the files are decrypted and he is scanning through. There are several redacted files saved under patient codes. When opened, _NO DIGITAL RECORD_ is watermarked across them in red lettering, with everything else blacked out, save for the A.R.G.U.S. emblem at the bottom and Amanda Waller’s signature.

“What does this mean?”

“It means A.R.G.U.S. buried something they didn’t want found,” he replies, grimly.

“So all this was for nothing,” I say, disappointed.

“Actually, it confirms what I already suspected.”

I glance at him, but he doesn’t make any effort to explain himself.

“Look, _Mr Medieval Weaponry_ , I’m not the kind of girl to run around risking her life without knowing what’s going on.”

His mouth is steady but his eyes are almost amused. “Medieval weaponry?”

“Don’t dodge the question!”

“I don’t believe there was a question in there,” he says, smugly.

Frustrated, I turn away, but a gloved hand rests on my shoulder.

“Knowing will change everything, Felicity. As the division head of TechSent, are you really ready to bear the consequences?”

I don’t hesitate. “Tell me.”

“I’ve made contact with various rebel groups in the area. You hear one story of someone recovering from the infection and pass it off as myth, but the whisperings are growing louder, more widely spread. I believe some of the Corrupted captured by A.R.G.U.S. for research may have shown signs of recovery, and were then eliminated on Waller’s orders.”

I start to feel a little sick, my mind rewinding back through all the Corrupted I’d tracked, all the orders I’d given to sanitize targets. “That can’t be right. Ca– my friend is in the science department. She’d never let something like that happen.”

“If she’d known, she would already be dead,” he says, bluntly. “Or she’s part of the cover-up. Either way, tell her nothing.”

“I don’t– how can you be sure? Have you spoken with someone who’s recovered?”

“I’m told they’re in hiding. The identification software that your department uses does not differentiate between Corrupted and Absolved, as they’re calling themselves. They’re understandably wary of turning up on A.R.G.U.S. surveillance.”

“I designed that software.”

He gives me a loaded look that tells me he already knew this.

“So that’s why you always use electric or tranq arrows to take down Corrupted. You knew all along that they could get better.”

“Not knew,” he clarifies. “Suspected. And we don’t yet know the conditions under which someone could recover.”

“What do you do with the ones you capture?”

“I don’t have holding cells, if that’s what you’re asking. I transport them to barricaded, outlying sectors of the city, beyond A.R.G.U.S. borders.”

Looking at my watch, I realise I’ve been gone more than an hour longer than I meant to be. “Shit. I’ve got to get back to the compound.”

“I’ll take you,” he says. “But first, promise me that no matter what, you have to go on like before.”

“What?”

“Do your job. You see a Corrupted; you give the order to sanitize. You can’t afford to hesitate. If anyone suspects you’re hiding something, Waller will have you killed. Promise me.”

I stare at him in horror, wondering how he can expect me to continue giving orders to sanitize – to _kill_ human beings? My software made Corrupted light up like Christmas trees on my screens – how many of them had been recovering from infection, Absolved? How many innocent lives had my technology, my orders destroyed?

“ _Felicity_ , promise me.” His hand grips my forearm, pulling me back to reality. “I know Waller made you believe that everything you’ve done is for the greater good. None of this is your fault, and if you get yourself killed now, you’ll never have a chance to help me bring A.R.G.U.S. down.”

Swallowing hard, I nod at his words. “I’ll be careful.”

“Good. Come on, we’ll take the bike.”

“The _what_?”

As it turns out, the masked vigilante does ride around on a motorcycle, weaving through alleys and around tight corners, all the while avoiding the surveillance hotspots with practiced ease. Despite the cold wind on my cheeks, I’m blushing furiously at having my arms wrapped tightly around his waist. He’s still using the scrambler, but I can feel the vibration of his voice through him as he speaks over his shoulder at me.

We slow to a stop near Gate F and I have to hold onto him while dismounting, at least until my legs stop shaking.

“I’m in the foundry most nights, if I’m not in the field,” he says. “If I’m not there, be sure to leave a note.”

I nod, understanding that any sign of a breach of his base would put him on high alert. “What do you need from me now?”

“Business as usual. Don’t put yourself in any unnecessary danger. Remember what I said.”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t let on that I know anything,” I say, waving my hand as I turn away from him.

“Not that.” He grabs my arm, forcing me to meet his intense gaze. “None of this is your fault.”

He seems to realise how close we are and lets go of me, stepping back toward his bike. I realise he’s not going to leave until he sees me go inside, so I give him an awkward, half-hearted wave before internally kicking myself and slipping into the compound before I can embarrass myself any further.

I arm the door, strip out of the S.I. gear as usual, and head back for the dorms. I pass the corridor that leads to the imprisonment sector, and I glance up to see Diggle the guard watching me, his arms folded. _Shit._

“Checking Gate F again, Smoak?” he grumbles, and my heart sinks.

“Actually, E this time,” I try, and he just raises an eyebrow at me.

“You know, the guy on night duty came around earlier. Nice kid; says he’s on most nights by himself.”

I keep my face perfectly calm, all the while wondering how fast I can get back out of the armed door and how dangerous it would be to leave the compound without any gear. “Are you going to tell Waller?”

There’s a pause of at least eight heartbeats as he stares at me, and I’m positive I’m going to suffocate in the tension.

“Tell Waller what?” He turns away, and I let out all my breath in one long rush, darting away before he can change his mind.

<\-----<<

“You look exhausted,” Caitlin tells me over lunch. “Didn’t you sleep at all last night?”

I shrug, poking at my own rations and not feeling particularly hungry. I’d spent the entire night counting all the people who’d died at my hand, and planning new identification software that can recognise different levels of symptoms in Corrupted, and therefore would hopefully be able to indicate if a subject is in recovery.

“Felicity?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, lightly. “You know how it is, sharing a dorm with other people; the snoring and sleep-talking gets to you.”

She and Cisco exchange looks, and it’s obvious that they want to ask me what was so important that I needed to hack into the servers, but we’re not alone at our table today. I’m thankful, because I can’t forget what the vigilante said – that there was a possibility Caitlin could have been involved in the cover-up. A nagging voice in my head points out that, if that were true, she already would’ve told Waller about the hack, but I can’t afford to trust anybody.

At least, not yet.

“Hey, did you hear about the rebel group S.I. found last night?” another girl at the table asks her friend, and my curiosity is piqued.

“What happened?” I find myself asking, and the girl, who I think is called Iris, gives me a strange look.

“They were in the old finance district. Waller gave a kill order, but Merlyn held them back. His son was one of them.”

I’m shocked into silence. Malcolm Merlyn was a hateful, ruthless man _before_ the plague, and when Waller had invited him to stand at her side, he’d become darkness itself. He’d established the Sanitation Initiative as a front line in the war against Corrupted, but it was merely a veil for an organisation that killed first and asked questions later. Merlyn was also a strict enforcer of execution as punishment for breach of rules in the compound, and always carried out the cold sanitations himself.

I’d only ever been in the same room with him once, but he’d given me nightmares for a week afterwards.

It was unusual for Merlyn himself to be in the field – he usually delegated leadership of S.I. to a woman known only as Harbinger. Tommy Merlyn had been signalled _deceased_ in A.R.G.U.S. files for at least ten months, but his body had never been recovered, apparently because he’d been alive the whole time.

“So they brought them in?” Cisco asks.

“Yeah, five of them. They’re in quarantine right now.”

“There are probably dozens of groups like that out there,” Caitlin points out. “There could be hundreds of people alive that we thought were dead this whole time. Rescuing them should be our first priority, not taking them out.”

“Tell that to Waller,” Iris shrugs.

I continue eating my meal in silence as the others speculate, thinking about Caitlin’s words. Is it really any better a fate, to retrieve the strays and condemn them to a life under Waller’s rule? It makes me even more certain that something needs to change, that we need to take the steps to start rebuilding a real life, above ground.

And maybe, just _maybe_ , the archer and I can make that happen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not alone. I have you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's that time of week again! A lot of the feedback that I have been getting is that people who don't normally like stories written in the first person are enjoying this one. I'm extremely appreciative of that sentiment, so thank you for giving it a chance. This has always been a story that follows Felicity's experiences, and when I started writing it, first person felt right from the very beginning. I'm flattered that I seem to be writing it well.
> 
> Next week I'll be at SDCC, so you may or may not get an update on time, depending on my wifi situation. I won't leave you hanging too long! As always, thanks and invisible baby dragon cuddles to thatmasquedgirl for her endless patience when I fret about dialogue in a sleep-deprived panic.

A few weeks pass, and life in the compound remains fairly uneventful. The guard, Diggle, turns a blind eye to my field trips out every couple of nights. I install some spyware in the A.R.G.U.S. servers, almost completely untraceable, so that I have access from the archer’s base of operations.

The Arrow, as I’ve started to call him – he claims he doesn’t need a nickname, but I catch the corner of his mouth turning up whenever I say it to his face – divides his time between searching for Absolved, and shutting down the Atom’s network. Occasionally, I get him to talk, mostly by babbling a lot about myself, and my own life before the plague. I know he’d had a sister, and I know he grew up outside of the Glades. I know that he didn’t really think of himself as a good person, and that fighting for justice now is his way of making up for who he was.

He lets slip a sentence or two, but a shadow always passes over his face, and he clams up again. It must be a lonely life, not letting anyone see beneath the mask.

It’s an offhand comment from me during my usual report that gets his attention, more so than anything I’ve ever told him before.

“They’re inducting that group into the compound tomorrow, Merlyn’s son and his friends.”

The Arrow’s head instantly lifts. “Merlyn’s son?”

“Yeah, Thomas, I think? Anyway, apparently there’s a kid with them who worked with the police on the initial Atom case. I want to pick his brain and see what he knows, and if he’s learned anything on the outside.”

I expect him to warn me to be careful, maybe even forbid me from asking questions I shouldn’t be asking, but he doesn’t even seem to understand what I said. Instead, he stalks over to the weapons table, studying a new data-leeching arrow I designed for him.

“Are you okay?” I ask, wondering what could’ve upset him so much.

“Fine,” he replies, shortly. “What are the names of the others recovered with Merlyn’s son?”

“I can find out for you.” I type for a moment, scanning through lines of code before files and photos pop up on my screen. “Bartholomew Allen, Hernando Garcia, Matthew Li, and Dinah Lance.”

In a heartbeat, the Arrow is over my shoulder, staring at the photos. I jump as he slams his fist on the desk, cursing in the foulest language I’ve ever heard him use.

“What? What is it?” I say, urgently.

He glances at me for a moment, almost as if trying to decide if he should tell me the truth.

“Malcolm Merlyn is responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of deaths. He is untouchable, or at least, he has been until now. I believed his children to be dead.”

“Children?” I echo, pulling up Merlyn’s profile on my screens. “He only has a son.”

He ignores me as if I hadn’t spoken. “Alive, Merlyn’s son is now his greatest weakness. Inside the A.R.G.U.S. compound, Thomas and the Lance girl – his girlfriend – will be targets. They’re not safe.”

“Waller wouldn’t let anything happen to them,” I scoff.

“Waller will be first in line to harm them if she can’t keep Malcolm under her command.”

I can hear his fear underneath the layers of voice distortion; it’s the first time it’s ever seemed like he’s not in complete control. I wonder idly if Thomas Merlyn is more important to him than I know.

“So what’s your plan, then? Waltz in there and ask them to follow you out?”

The archer grits his teeth. “Something like that.”

“You can’t be serious,” I say, rolling my eyes. “You’ll _never_ get in and out of there alone.”

“I’m not alone,” he shrugs, pulling the strap of his quiver over his shoulder. “I have you.”

While the Arrow is out on patrol, exorcising some of his inner demons, I turn my attention to planning an escape. With the new guests to the underground party in quarantine, I’ve not yet had a chance to meet them and determine what kind of people they are.

For all I know, Thomas could shadow his father everywhere he goes, and then it would be impossible to get him out.

It becomes evident that Gate F is the best bet. My main concern is how, in a stronghold as carefully monitored as this one, I can possibly corner the son of the second-in-command and convince him to leave with me.

Without getting a new lead fashion accessory, of course.

If I can hand off Thomas and his girlfriend to the vigilante at Gate F, I can duck back to TechSent and doctor the feeds before anyone realises they’ve left. With a bit of careful planning, and a whole lot of luck, I might be able to come up with an excuse good enough to get the two of them onside.

“I have a plan,” the Arrow announces as he clatters down the stairs, telegraphing his return to avoid startling me.

“Me too,” I frown with suspicion, spinning around in my chair to face him. “Give me a week to observe and gain their trust, and I should be able to get them out to you.”

He shakes his head. “No. We have to move faster. I’ll go in tomorrow night.”

“ _Tomorrow_?” I say in disbelief, and then my eyebrows rise higher as I process the rest of his words. “ _You’ll_ go in? Are you insane?”

“Sometimes the best option is just brute force. If it looks like abduction, there’ll be fewer questions. I need to look like I’m operating alone. And it’s too much of a risk to leave them there any longer. Once they’re out of quarantine, they’re sitting ducks.”

Silently, I turn away to study the map of the compound again.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice a shade quieter.

“Finding you a way in. If you go crashing through Gate F, they’ll know there’s a weakness there and seal it.”

“If you leave another door unarmed, they’ll know.”

I nod at him and hold up one of his explosive arrows. “That’s why you’re going to trip it.”

<\-----<<

“Giant robots.”

I roll my eyes, shoving a forkful of vegetables in my mouth. “It would never work,” I say when I’m finished chewing. “Just because they did it in _Pacific Rim_ , doesn’t mean it’s a viable idea.”

“Give me one reason,” Cisco protests.

With Caitlin out doing final medical checks on the new underground citizens, it’s just the two of us at our table in the mess hall. It’s easier to lose myself in banter with Cisco and not think about what will come to pass tonight.

“Barring the impossibility of drifting? Think of how slow and heavy something like that would be, out wandering the city. In the ocean, sure, but they’d be too dangerous and destructive around infrastructure. And one of them had fifty engines per muscle strand, remember? How would we begin to power that sort of thing? Before you suggest nuclear reactors, remember that we _really_ don’t need to add that to our existing list of potentially world-ending problems.”

“So they wouldn’t have to be _that_ giant,” Cisco shrugs.

“Okay, and what about the capability for use as a WMD? If we start developing that kind of technology, we’re just inviting all kinds of threats. We’d defeat the virus just to start another war.”

He frowns, and I smile at the way his fork falls to the table, forgotten.

“Imagine how expensive it would be to make that kind of specialized equipment,” I add, needlessly. “It would be so hard to obtain the right materials.”

“Dogs,” he suggests, after a pause. “The virus is confined to one species. They could be trained to sniff out Corrupted.”

“Yeah? And where exactly are you planning to get them? Plus, immune doesn’t mean that Corrupted couldn’t harm them.”

Cisco huffs and leans back in his chair, clearly defeated for now.

It isn’t often that we have a table to ourselves in the mess hall, and I find myself staring at him, wondering what he would think of me and what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks. We’re here throwing out impossible ideas in a game, and meanwhile the vigilante and I are closer to the end of the virus than we’ve ever been.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he grins, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue at me.

I take a deep breath. “Hypothetically, if it came down to it, you’d have my back, right?”

His expression turns serious. “I would die for you, Smoak. I know there are things you’re not telling me, but I trust your reasoning.”

“I don’t know if I deserve your trust,” I sigh. “But I’m grateful for it. I hope I won’t give you any reasons to lose faith in me.”

Cisco glances around, before reaching across the table to grasp my wrist. “You know you can trust me, right? If you’re going to do anything reckless…”

I shake my head at him, minutely. “Not yet. I’ll need your help for something, soon, but until then, it’s probably safer if you don’t know much about it.”

“Okay. Just remember, I know what Waller is capable of, just as much as you do. I will always stand with you, if I had to. Hypothetically, of course.” He winks, and I smile gratefully back at him.

“Hypothetically, you’re the best.”

He smirks. “And don’t you forget it!”

<\-----<< 

Laurel Lance is a force of nature.

I’ve been sitting in the corner of the library, watching her talk and laugh. She wears the same grey tank top and khakis as everyone else, but in an effortlessly stylish way. Her newly shoulder-length hair gives an edge to her look – apocalypse chic, I’d call it.

I resent her calm, controlled demeanor; unlike me, she can’t possibly know what’s about to happen.

In exactly two minutes and seventeen seconds, the Arrow is going to breach Gate B with two calculated explosions, from a distance, of course. Earlier in the day, I slipped a worm into the security software, which would hopefully slow down the program enough for the vigilante to get inside before lockdown protocol initiates.

Once it kicks in, though, it’s going to be chaos.

I’m so focused on counting down the seconds that I barely notice when the sofa sinks next to me.

“Hi there.”

I look up into clear blue eyes and a perfectly charming smile.

“Tommy Merlyn. You work in TechSent, right?”

“Tommy Merlyn,” I repeat, blankly.

“No, that’s _my_ name,” he laughs.

“Oh, right. Felicity,” I offer, trying to smile.

He winks conspiratorially at me. “Listen, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m sort of the new kid around here. Do you think you could show me around TechSent? It would be interesting to see how this all works.”

The charming façade is flimsy, at least to someone like me who is used to people like Tommy trying to swing favours. If he wants access to TechSent, he could easily just ask his father; evidently there’s something about this that he doesn’t want Malcolm to know. Of course, that just makes Tommy all the more intriguing.

“Uh, sure. Come by sometime when I’m on shift,” I respond, flushing slightly as I realise what that sounds like. “I mean, not like I’m _flirting_ with you or anything. Not in a weird way. Just whenever you want to stop by and I can show you a few things. Normal things. _Technology_ things.”

I’m rescued from my embarrassment by a rumble loud enough to make the solid concrete floor vibrate. The lights flicker once, and everybody in the room glances at each other in confusion.

The wail of sirens is sudden and deafening. I clamp my hands over my ears and jump to my feet, knowing I’ll have to report to my station immediately.

A hand falls on my arm – Tommy.

“Where are you going?” he demands, his eyes wide with panic.

I glance over at Laurel, who unsurprisingly is the most calm person in the room, and then back to him.

“Stay with her,” I say, softly and urgently. “And stay _here_.”

Blessedly, he doesn’t even hesitate to let go of me and make a beeline for his girlfriend.

“Smoak! Ramon!” A garbled shout over the intercom draws my attention, and I start running.

I’d chosen the library specifically for its distance from TechSent. The longer it takes me to get there, the longer the Arrow would have to get out.

I take a right and freeze. He’s right there, in all his green-leathered glory, and I curse myself for not having accounted for this possibility.

He thinks quickly, dropping a pellet that quickly fills the corridor with thick, choking smoke.

Obscured from the cameras, he taps my shoulder as he passes.

“The library,” I gasp out, and he taps again to acknowledge the information.

I stumble on, ignoring the automated announcements about breach protocol. I pass a group of S.I. soldiers with fully loaded automatic weapons that I hope they’ll never get to use inside these walls.

Malcolm Merlyn and Amanda Waller are already breathing down Cisco’s neck when I collapse into my seat, still coughing. The nightshift kid is huddled silently in the corner, stupefied, still clutching a forgotten cup of coffee with his mouth hanging slightly open.

“How did he get inside?” Waller snaps, her sneer displaying all of her perfectly straight teeth. “This was supposed to be impenetrable!”

I murmur something noncommittal and pull up the feeds, glancing at Cisco out of the corner of my eye. He’s pale with shock, probably because Merlyn senior is the last person to whom he’d like to be in close proximity at any given time.

“Secure the gates first,” Merlyn growls. “I’ve got a squadron on Gate B, but I don’t think that was his exit strategy anyway.”

I methodically clear and lock down the systems for each gate, being sure to leave Gate A until last. Waller is berating Cisco for not being able to figure out what the Arrow’s purpose is, and Merlyn is distracted by it long enough that I quickly close the feed from the library and open up a different one instead.

Praying to anyone who will listen, I start locking down Gate A, unnecessarily running a diagnostic first, just to buy time. It’s at that moment that three figures appear on the footage, the smallest being dragged along by the one in the hood. The third glances up for a brief second, but it’s just enough for Malcolm to recognise his son’s face and roar into his comm unit at the first sound of gunshots.

“ _Hold your fire_!”

I expect Waller to override the order; Tommy and Laurel’s lives are of no consequence to her. Instead, inexplicably, she turns her fury on me.

“Shut it _down_!”

My fingers fly across the keyboard, but it’s no use. Even if I had wanted to stop them, it was already too late. With three seconds to spare, they slip out the gate with a well-aimed explosive arrow. Malcolm leaves the room in a whirlwind of colourful curses. It’s out of my hands, now - I can only hope that they’ll outrun the full force of the hell that Waller will send down upon them.

Despite the defeat, Waller seems oddly calm, even pleased. Uneasily, I exchange looks with Cisco before deciding to come out with it.

“You could have ordered S.I. to kill on sight. Why didn’t you?”

She gives us a calculating look, and I fight back the urge to shiver. “The vigilante risked his own life to retrieve them. He needs them for a reason, and until I know why, they are worth more to me alive.”

It’s perhaps the most honest statement to ever come out of Amanda Waller’s mouth, and I’m equally terrified and impressed at her ability to consider all the evidence under pressure.

“Track them,” she commands, giving the still-dazed nightshift guy a disdainful look. “Although, clearly he knew his way in without alerting us. I want to know how. Call in the rest of the department and get Harbinger on the line.”

She leaves then, and Cisco lets out his breath in a low whistle.

“Waller can say what she wants about the guy, but he sure knows how to make an entrance.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s so good to see you, you know, alive.”

It takes a week before the compound settles. Naturally, after the breach, security is increased tenfold. It soon becomes apparent, though, that the vigilante is not returning for a second act. Once they made it outside the walls, Tommy, Laurel, and the Arrow had completely vanished.

Malcolm’s rage was unrivalled.

Luckily, when Waller insists that we manually check and secure every gate, Cisco doesn’t flinch when I ask him to skip over Gate F. We toy around with the wall panel for a while before moving on, and he doesn’t mention it again.

When I finally think enough time has passed, I silently make my way through the compound after curfew; Diggle pointedly looks away as I slip out. I’m more cautious than usual, double-checking my route, keeping my head angled away from the defunct cameras, just in case.

The Arrow glances up as I swoop down the stairs, barely slowing until I’m right in front of him. I would hug him if I weren’t worried he would impale me on an arrow for it.

“It’s so good to see you, you know, _alive_ ,” I say, still slightly breathless.

He half-smiles, which means he’s in a better mood than I’ve ever seen him. “How is Waller handling the situation?”

“Surprisingly, she thinks she has the upper hand for it.”

He nods once, as if he’d expected it. “She does not know more than I want her to, at this stage.”

His tone is full of things he isn’t saying. Could the archer be someone A.R.G.U.S. believes to be dead? _Dead men don’t have names_ , he’d said, and it seemed like he had a history with Waller. It makes it impossible for her to anticipate an enemy she can’t identify.

Instead, I change the topic. “Where are Tommy and Laurel?”

“I have them sealed in a safehouse not far from here. I’ve spent the last few days clearing the area and I’ll need you to set up some surveillance.”

“How did they receive their knight in shining leather?” I frown slightly and wrinkle my nose. “Not leather in a weird sex way. That sounded like I meant the sex way.”

“I know what you meant,” he replies, amused. “They were… difficult to convince, at first.”

“But you did convince them? How?”

He shifts, almost imperceptibly, but I am growing to recognise his signals. “Yes, but they are still a little… hostile. Understandably.”

I know he won’t give me any more information, so I just shrug and head for my desk. “Where is the safehouse?”

“The old clock tower on the corner of Juniper and 7th street.” He lifts one shoulder dismissively at my curious expression. “High ground gives them a better vantage point, and I know the building is secure. Canary liked it there,” he adds softly.

As much as I’m longing to ask questions, I know he will not answer. Swiftly, I hack into the cameras in the area of the clock tower, redirecting the feeds to my screens and looping the A.R.G.U.S. footage. “We should probably set up some motion sensors in the surrounding area, too, so we can be alerted even if we’re not on neighbourhood watch.”

“I’ll look into it.”

He picks up a duffel bag, evidently loaded with supplies he scavenged for Tommy and Laurel.

“Oh, wait!” I yelp, holding up a hand to stop him and scrambling for my backpack. “Here.”

He looks confused as he takes what I hand him – a small box of tampons, a hairbrush, and a tie-dyed sweater I found in her room with _Sara_ written on the label. “Tampons?” he asks in a choked voice, either from embarrassment or suppressed laughter.

“It might be the apocalypse, but a woman still needs them,” I shrug. “I filched them out of A.R.G.U.S. supplies; they won’t be missed. And I know she might be holed up for a while, so I can definitely bring more.”

“Very… thoughtful,” he says, and I scowl at him good-naturedly.

He disappears with the bag, leaving me to my research. I’ve been thinking a lot about my software in the past few days, trapped inside the compound, and I think I’ve had a breakthrough with the schematics of the portable S.I. scanners. With TechSent looking over their shoulder via bodycams, operatives no longer carry the scanners, due to their bulk. They’re programmed with an earlier version of the identification software, so it should be easy enough to tweak them.

First, though, I need to get my hands on one.

<\-----<<

The Arrow isn’t waiting in his lair when I arrive a few nights later. I’m practically buzzing with excitement, so it’s disappointing to think that I might not see him. It occurs to me that now, with other allies on the outside, he doesn’t have to rely on me quite so much for company. I force down the unwelcome feelings associated with that realization.

I busy myself for several hours surveying the streets of Starling, taking notes of Corrupted activity and comparing them over time. The other rebel groups hiding in the city are good at avoiding the cameras, but the slow decline in numbers of Corrupted in an area is almost a neon flashing geotag.

The alarm system on the door beeps twice and swings open. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight,” the vigilante says, by way of greeting.

“My presence makes any night infinitely more enjoyable,” I retort automatically, before cringing. “ _Platonically_ enjoyable, that is.”

He touches my shoulder as he passes, headed to put his bow on a new stand he built for it. “Any news?”

“I’ve been busy,” I grin. “I’ve been working on a unit that should be able to distinguish Corrupted from Absolved.”

He pauses and turns to face me. “How?”

“I’m rewiring an old S.I. portable. It’s taking a while, but I have a theory–”

“You stole equipment from S.I.?” he demands, and I frown at his lack of enthusiasm.

“I prefer to think of it as _liberated_.” At his answering silence, I sigh, exasperated. “They won’t find it, okay? It’s in the broken ventilation unit near Gate F, and I only work on it when I’m alone.”

“How could you have been so reckless?” he fumes. “If you wanted to develop tech like that, you should have approached me. We could source materials, raid a few science centres, build it out here. Instead, you tell me you’ve… hidden it in _an air vent_?”

I scowl right back at him. “If they find that vent, I’m screwed anyway – I keep my gear there. I spend so much time inside those walls, and I have comparatively little time here, with a lot more work to do. I was going crazy, thinking about all the people who’ve died on my watch.”

The Arrow makes a noise, something like a snarl, stalking towards me until he’s right in my face. “If just one person sees you working on it, if one person _realizes_ you’ve stolen a scanner for repurposing…” He softens, just the slightest bit. “I can’t protect you when you’re in there, Felicity. I don’t have any way of knowing if your cover has been blown.”

And just like that, he’s illuminated in a new light. Before, I knew my place as his tech support, even as another voice to break the monotony of solitary life. I was never sure that he cared enough to value my safety, at least outside of the inconvenience my death would pose to his endgame.

Gently, I grasp his fist over the worn leather of his glove. “They won’t miss the scanner. It’s been tagged out of service for weeks and it’s not a priority for repair. S.I. rarely uses their portables, anyway.”

He shakes his head, pulling his hand away. “You’ll dismantle it and return it to maintenance. It’s an unnecessary risk to take right in the mouth of the beast.” His tone is firm; it brooks no argument.

“No way,” I protest, anger rising in me once more. “My life, my choice. You don’t get to order me around.”

Without giving him the chance to answer, I storm out of the room through the alternate exit into the alleyway. The door closes with a satisfying slam behind me.

I’m grateful that I’ve already programmed all the cameras surrounding Verdant on a blank loop, because it means I can pace furiously without fear of being seen. The Arrow doesn’t follow, which I take to mean he’s equally angry at me, if not irrationally. It enrages me that he thinks I’m not careful, that I don’t consider every eventuality before I act. The open air is cool on my heated cheeks.

I sit with a huff on a stone step at the top of the alley, folding my arms across my chest. As much as I’d like to call it a night and head for the compound, there’s too much to be done here. I decide to take a few moments more, needing that extra break from the infuriatingly stubborn vigilante that I agreed to help.

I hear a noise behind me and sigh. “Is it so much to ask for just a minute of peace before your righteous ass comes back to bug me again?”

He doesn’t answer, and a sick feeling settles at the bottom of my stomach. Slowly, I look down towards the entry to Verdant.

A single figure, too lanky to be the Arrow, is steadily making its way toward me. Matted hair, white eyes, ragged clothes covered in filth: I’m facing down a Corrupted without a weapon in hand.

It’s only twenty feet from the doorway I’d exited. Even at my best pace, I wouldn’t make it, so I have no choice but to run into the main road in search of cover.

“ _Arrow_!” I cry out, desperately hoping he can hear me in spite of the reinforced steel walls and concrete slabs between us. The Corrupted gives chase, though blessedly not at a full run.

I reach the next road, where A.R.G.U.S. camera coverage is too heavy to risk passage, and instead veer off down another alley.

My heart sinks as I see two more Corrupted headed my way, no doubt drawn out by the noise. With the way behind me out of the question, and the way ahead blocked, I head for a chain link fence between two buildings.

With agility Pre-Apocalypse Felicity never dreamed she would have, I scale the fence, only to tear a hole in my cargo pants as I flip over the top and land heavily on a dumpster. Winded but fuelled by adrenaline, I jump off, heading for a rickety fire escape, the grumbling of the three Corrupted behind me growing louder as they follow over the fence. One of them is surprisingly lithe in climbing, and I take off at a run across the roof of the building, leaping across a five-foot gap to the next.

Unfortunately for me, the next jump is a steeper drop, and the impact as I hit the roof sends a shudder through my bones. I roll twice, gasping and groaning, blinded in pain, and the first Corrupted makes the leap, landing on all fours like a true predator.

I don’t have the energy to scream, but hot tears burn tracks through the dirt on my face, and unwarranted, a bright blue pair of eyes appears in my mind.

There’s a slight noise, a whirr, and a choked-off gargle. My vision clears enough to see the green silhouette standing over me send two more arrows at the figures on the roof of the next building.

When he kneels down, his face so close to mine, I long to touch the stubble covering his tense jaw, but my arm is almost too heavy to lift.

“Is anything broken?” he murmurs, gloved fingers pushing my tangled hair off my sweaty, tear-stained cheeks. “Did they bite you?” I manage to make some sort of negative noise, and he slowly helps me to my feet. Once I’m standing, his hands frame my face with a fierce desperation, and he touches his forehead against my own. Shakily, I succeed this time in placing my right hand on his cheek, and I could swear he leans into my touch.

“Come on,” he says, gruffly. “We can’t stay out in the open.” He effortlessly sweeps me up into his arms, and I’m too drained to protest.

By the time he’s sat me on the med table back at his base, I’ve managed to get control of myself again.

“I’m fine,” I tell him, stiffly. “Just a few bruises.”

He pointedly looks down at my right thigh, where the edges of the torn material are stained a deep crimson.

“Oh, right.”

While he trades green leather for blue latex, I catch a glimpse of his scarred, calloused hands. He hands me a towel to use as a cover when I remove my pants, and his hands are painstakingly gentle as he cleans the wound for a better look.

“You’ll need stitches,” he tells me, apologetically, “but I don’t have anything suitable for a local anaesthetic. I typically don’t need one.”

“That’s fine,” I grimace. “Do it without.”

I regret my show of bravado when, after the quick stab of a tetanus booster, he neatly sews the two sides back together. Thankfully, he doesn’t remark on my colorful language while he does it. He then addresses the dozen or so other scrapes I obtained, before throwing all the medical supplies away and turning his back so I can redress.

“You handled those stitches better than most,” he tells me, a hint of admiration in his voice.

“Thanks.” I shift, wincing at the ache in every part of my body. “Ugh, it’s going to be hard to walk normally back at the compound when I feel like I’ve been trampled in a wildebeest stampede.”

Instead of a half-smile like I’ve come to expect, he looks at me with wounded eyes. “I’m sorry. I crossed a line when I tried to order you around. We’re a team now, and I should treat you like it.”

“I’m sorry, too. I was pissed, but going outside was just stupid.”

He touches my shoulder, and I jump slightly when I feel his bare hand on my skin, realising he’s not wearing his gloves. “We were _both_ stupid tonight,” he says, the corner of his mouth twisting like he’s not sure if he’s amused or resentful, then he pulls his hand away and I pretend to adjust the strap of my tank top.

“I should reroute those dormant A.R.G.U.S. cameras outside, see if I can get our own feed going,” I suggest. “Might prevent something like this in the future, if we can see a threat coming.”

He nods and returns to his training mats, his improvised fight dummy beckoning for a few punches. “When you’re ready to leave tonight, let me know. We can take the bike.”

I murmur my agreement, having expected nothing less.

Somehow I know the Arrow isn’t going to let me out of his sight above ground anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys... SDCC was amazing. Sorry for missing a week in the update schedule, but it was WORTH IT. I think I've watched the video of Emily talking to me, like, three hundred times.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! As always, thanks to thatmasquedgirl for endless encouragement, inspiration, and unrelated linguistics nerd discussions.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I always look forward to Compound Karaoke Night."

A thirteen-year-old Felicity once entertained dreams of becoming a veterinarian.

My best friend Kara had a kitten, and I hadn’t been able to think of anything better than helping cute little animals feel better. Of course, my well-meaning mother went out to buy me a book on veterinary medicine, and a particularly gruesome picture of an abscess being drained had me worshipping the porcelain gods.

So _that_ dream had lasted all of three months.

Never had I thought that I would be here, learning to stitch human flesh from the guy with a knife wound in his shoulder.

“Oh, God, I’m going to be sick.”

“You’re doing fine.” He winces when my hand slips and I accidentally pull the suture too quickly. “These skills are invaluable in the field. You never know when the basics are going to save someone’s life – I learned that lesson a long time ago.”

The Arrow had just been out on a routine patrol when he’d run into some opportunistic looters. Shockingly, two years of a debilitating contagious virus works miracles in shutting down petty crime in the city’s rough parts, so the archer hadn’t expected to run into a couple of kids in an abandoned hardware store. He sent them on their way, but not before one got a good shot in with a vegetable knife.

“Okay, I think I’m done.”

He inspects the wound briefly before slipping back into his jacket and zipping it closed. Somehow, we’d managed to remain in such close proximity without his face becoming visible, and I’m surprised to realize that it is no longer something that bothers me.

“Good. You’re a fast learner. I have a lot more to teach you,” he says, with a macabre sort of amusement.

“Can’t wait,” I reply, faintly, and he smirks.

Since the night of the Corrupted attack, he’s relaxed his guard a little. He talks briefly about people from his past – never names, but enough to reveal tiny pieces of his humanity, slotting into place like a puzzle that you thought would form one picture, but turned out to be something more beautiful and entirely different. His smiles are easier, the tension fading from his movements. At times, on a good day, he is even _playful_ , something I would not have thought possible in a world as lost as ours.

“Aside from the clock tower, there are two other bases set up for our use,” the vigilante tells me, gesturing to the computer. “I should show you, in case this place is compromised and you need somewhere to run.”

The implication that he would not also need to relocate in the event that his current base is breached is not a welcome one, but I choose to ignore it and pull up a map instead.

“Here,” he says, pointing to a building in the business district. “There’s a secret sub-level that’s not on the city’s plans. And here, the former campaign office of Sebastian Blood,” he indicates as he speaks, referencing Starling’s last mayor who’d been among the first to die in the outbreak. “Underground, again. Both are fully stocked with weapons, non-perishables, and other essentials.” Bizarrely, I picture a loaded pistol sitting next to a can of baked beans and a bar of soap. He half-smiles as if he knows what I’m thinking, which I suspect he might.

“This is a taser,” he continues, handing me a small plastic gun that somehow doesn’t look like a gun at all. “Well, it’s like one. There are three cartridges, and it should incapacitate someone for several minutes, Corrupted or otherwise. I want you to keep it with you at all times when you’re outside of the compound.”

I’m somewhat thankful he’s not expecting me to use a real gun, although he seems to have a lot more faith in my ability to aim than I do.

“I feel like I’ve passed some kind of exam and now I’m being inducted into the real team,” I tell him, checking the safety is on before tucking the taser into my S.I. issue utility belt. “There should be an ‘Eye of the Tiger’ montage of you teaching me to throw punches and climb the salmon ladder.”

He glances towards the equipment in question, then looks back and opens his mouth.

“No!” I exclaim, before he can speak. “I was joking.”

“I wasn’t,” he grumbles under his breath, turning away.

I was wrong; my aim must be okay after all.

The tennis ball I fling at him bounces off the back of his skull.

<\-----<<

It’s raining heavily and visibility is poor, so S.I. retires early from a scouting expedition to Starling National Bank. In the last two weeks, Waller has been focusing on reclaiming important buildings and infrastructure, cleansing them of Corrupted and opportunistic criminals who’ve made them their homes. Harbinger, though, decides that to persevere would be to put the whole team in danger, so that’s how I ended up with a free afternoon in the common room.

Barry Allen is lounging around on a sofa, grinning as he chats with Cisco and Iris. He’s a nice guy, eager and surprisingly trusting, which makes him somewhat of a liability. He readily shared all his information from his time working with the police department with A.R.G.U.S., which means the Arrow and I gained no advantage in the hunt for the Atom after the friendliest interrogation of Barry’s life. He doesn’t see any reason to question Waller’s authority – like everyone else in the compound, all he wants is to live a life as close to normal as he can.

Iris waves me over with a smile. “Hey, Felicity. You clocked off early?”

“Can’t see anything in this weather,” I reply, nodding.

“I’ve forgotten what rain feels like,” she murmurs. “I always hated wet weather, but now I wish more than anything that I could just go and stick my hand out there, just for a moment.”

Barry shrugs. “You guys are lucky in here. It’s dry and warm and there’s always food, even if it isn’t great. When we were in hiding, there were days where we had no food or proper shelter at all.”

Cisco looks intrigued. “What was it like, fighting Corrupted face-to-face?”

“Oh, I didn’t really do that part,” Barry answers, blushing a little. “Laurel took care of it, most of the time; her dad was big on self-defence classes, apparently. I helped find weapons, though.”

This sends the boys off on a tangent about knives, and I trade glances with Iris, who still looks somewhat melancholic.

“Do you think he’s right, about us being better off in here?” she asks, softly.

“It must have been hard for him, living like that for two years.” My reply is evasive, and Iris, who once told me she’d been a reporter before the outbreak, isn’t fooled. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s less dangerous inside these four walls, but it doesn’t mean we should be confined here for the rest of our lives.”

“Is it less dangerous?” It’s all she says, and she rejoins the other conversation without waiting for a response. I don’t know if she’s referring to the danger of routine, obediently living each day underground like this until we die, or if she’s talking about Amanda Waller herself.

She’d be right on both counts.

“…and then I spent two days trying to tune it, see if there was any sort of emergency broadcast, but mostly picking up static…” Barry is waving his hands around as he speaks.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, my interest piqued.

“I found a portable radio in a basement and tried to build something to boost the signal. It didn’t really work, of course, because there have to be people in the radio stations to broadcast anything, but I think we could probably solve a communication problem…”

He doesn’t realize it, of course, but his words have given me a brilliant idea for the design of my new scan software. I know the nanobots emit radio waves, but if I can tune and measure the exact frequency of a Corrupted subject – perhaps with some variation on a portable radio – instead of just detecting it, it might give me the kind of information I need.

I jump to my feet, and the others look up at me in surprise.

“You okay, Smoak?” Cisco frowns.

“Yes, great! It’s so great to have you, Barry. I mean, not that I _have_ you,” I correct myself, cringing at his bewildered expression. “That you’re here, you know, as a friend. Why do I always make it weird?”

I don’t give them a chance to answer, fleeing to my dorm for my notebook, already sketching out plans in my mind.

<\-----<<

I’m having a truly _excellent_ day, because not only have I finished work early and thought of a great way to learn more about the virus, but the vigilante is doing muscle-ups in the rafters, giving me a perfect view of… well, everything. It’s kind of beautiful, really: the flash of the dim lighting on the green leather, the smoothness of his movements, the rhythmic sound of his breaths.

Once he’s down, he runs a towel across his forehead before making sure the hood is pulled firmly forward and walking over to peer at my computer screen.

“Wouldn’t it be easier for you to do that without the uniform?” I ask, and he shrugs, grabbing a bottle of water off the desk.

“If it’s uncomfortable or restricting my movement, it’s not something I should be wearing in the field. Besides, how would _you_ have me do it?”

I blush, but attempt to cover it with a playful scowl. “You should be used to this by now.”

“How are we going in our search for other groups?”

“I’ve picked up two silhouettes in the reflection of a storefront,” I tell him, zooming in on the two figures. “The boy looks young, but I can’t get a clearer shot of the girl. Based on their supplies, it looks like they’re from a larger group. We might have to put this on the backburner, though.”

His head turns sharply toward me. “Why?”

“A.R.G.U.S. has a lead on the Atom’s next auction. It’s going down soon, maybe a week from now. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the Atom’s tech in Waller’s hands. We’re going to have to beat them to it.”

“Good,” he agrees with a nod. “Any other news from the compound?”

“Oh, you know,” I say, airily waving my hand. “Four-minute showers, vacuum-sealed dinners… I always look forward to Compound Karaoke Night, though.”

He stares at me, disbelievingly. “Is that a thing?”

“I wish it was.”

He fights to keep the smile off his face, but I can’t miss it. “Any _relevant_ news?”

“My scanner will be ready for testing soon. I’m going to call it the Smoak Tactical Enemy Locate and Label Apparatus, or STELLA for short.”

“I’m not calling it that.”

“I just need to learn a little more about the physiology of the virus,” I continue, ignoring him.

An alert pops up on the screen, followed by a string of code with a bird footprint. The Arrow reaches over me to open a program, seemingly random assortments of letters slowly forming words. The encryption is good, I’d guess second only to mine.

“It’s a message from Tommy,” he explains, and something pulls in the back of my mind at the familiarity of the diminutive. “They’re just checking in.”

“You set up communications without me?” I ask, only slightly offended.

“The system was already in place. It was designed by a friend who was always much better at thinking ahead than I was.”

The sadness bleeds through the voice modulator, so I allow him to walk away, choosing instead to run some maintenance programs on our external cameras for something to pass the time. He is silent for so long that I think the conversation is over.

He sighs, once, and I spin my chair to face him, expecting instructions of some kind.

“It had been almost a year since the outbreak. I was starting to do some recon on A.R.G.U.S., studying their patterns, weapons. She was there, too.”

“The Canary?” I clarify, surprised, and he nods once.

“I followed her back to her base. Like me, she was working alone, competent with hand-to-hand combat, but she had a better computer setup than I did. I approached her and proposed a partnership, which she accepted. It worked well for a while, at least until she wanted to know who was under the hood.”

The pain in obvious on the little I can see of his face, and I don’t push for more.

“Once she knew, it changed _everything_. You can fight alongside a faceless soldier in this war, but the moment they become a real person to you, you’ve signed your own death warrant. She was… _distracted_ , we both were. We were trailing Harbinger’s team and I took the wrong route, got myself cornered and nearly spotted. She hesitated, if only for a second, but that was enough for the scanners to pick her up.”

Shivers run through me. “They sanitized her?”

“Not immediately. She surrendered to Harbinger, lowered her staff to the ground, and got on her knees. By the time she was in cuffs, I was already working out a plan to extract her.” He takes a deep, shaking breath. “Then Malcolm Merlyn stepped forward, claiming she was a Trojan horse from a hostile group, sent to attack from the inside… and that was it. He looked down at her, lifted his pistol, and shot her in the face.”

I expect the energy radiating from him to be anger, even despair, but instead I’m overwhelmed by his _guilt_. The fingers on his right hand twitch against his thumb, as if he were nocking an invisible arrow. It’s obvious now that he and the Canary were _more_ than just allies on the battlefield, and it saddens me to think of everything and everyone he’s lost.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell him softly, knowing my words are about as convincing to him as they would be to a brick wall.

Frustrated tears glint on his cheeks as he looks skyward with a bitter laugh. “As soon as I realized Malcolm was in the field, I should have called it off. I knew what he would do if he recognized her.”

“ _Recognized_ her? From before?”

The Arrow grimaces. “Yes. I knew what could happen, and then I was the reason she hesitated when she should have saved her own skin. By knowing _me_ , she opened herself up to her greatest weakness.” I know where he’s going with this, even before he looks at me. “Felicity, I’ve already put you in enough danger. If your first instinct isn’t to run and leave me to my own fate… If you start to care about the man behind the mask…”

_That’s stupid_ , I think. _How do I convince him that ship’s already sailed?_

“She knew the risks, just like I do,” I tell him instead. “You can’t go around carrying everyone else’s burdens on your shoulders. They’ll get sore.”

“I swore to myself that I could protect you.”

“And I appreciate that, really. Look, I know you’ve got a lot of demons to exorcise because of who you think you were before the city fell; God knows we’ve all learned a lot about ourselves since that day. Don’t patronize me by trying to convince me your secret is for my own safety. _When_ you tell me,” I say, emphasizing the inevitability of it, “it won’t change a thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to thatmasquedgirl for the vet info, the appreciation of my acronym skills, and the mental picture of Cisco and Felicity duetting at karaoke night. 
> 
> Thanks guys for sticking with me - it really means a lot and I'm glad you're enjoying it! Writing has been going very slowly lately and I wish I could do so much more for you guys than just one measly update that's never on time. Rest assured that I see and cherish every little tiny bit of support; you guys keep me going. 
> 
> I love Sara Lance with all my heart and have several beautiful universes built around her not dying - I'm sorry that this isn't one of them. I hate myself, too.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Thank you for trusting me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a little something to ease you guys into the work week ;)

It takes me several days to get Caitlin alone. I need further information about the virus to finish my new scanning software, and I can no longer allow myself to believe that one of my best friends could just sit idly by while victims are needlessly dying.

“This information is classified, Felicity. If I tell you, I’m putting both of us in danger.”

“I just want to understand it. Maybe your scientists aren’t going about curing this the right way. If I can learn more about the technology, maybe I can come up with some tech-based ideas on how to stop it.”

Caitlin presses her lips into a thin line and looks furtively toward the door of the lab. “What exactly do you want to know?”

“When we designed the scanners to identify Corrupted, we built them to detect any radio waves emitted from the body, right?”

“Yes. Essentially, once the nanobots are in the system, they make their way to the brain. The cerebrospinal fluid that makes up the brain tissue is essentially filtered blood plasma, so it ends up circulating again and again through the body. It’s why the frequency emitted by the bots is equal through the body – why their silhouettes glow on your screen.”

“Is there any data on the frequency of the waves? Does it change with time or any other factors?”

Caitlin frowns, but obediently types her request into the terminal. After a brief pause, she shakes her head. “Nothing under my clearance. We know it’s high enough not to be mistaken for a pacemaker or other medical implant. Why?”

I bite my lip and shrug at her, hating that I have to lie. “Just a hunch. Probably a dead end. Do we know much else?”

“Many of the world’s leading specialists in infection are dead or missing. We have no way of contacting science units in other cities, since all communications are down. Any progress we’ve made has been slow and hindered by the fact that we’re dealing with a technology-based virus for the first time in history. We’re flying blind.”

I reach out to touch her arm, noting the tears glittering in her eyes.

“Every time I go to sleep, I remember what happened on one of my first days in the department. Back then, we still believed the Atom was using an existing or altered biological weapon _. Nanobots are just science fiction_ , they’d told us. So we put a sedated Corrupted in an MRI, and we watched as the body contorted and twisted, and the veins rippled and stretched…” Caitlin shudders, and I feel equally nauseated. “It was grotesque, like blood was trying to force its way out through the skin. The Corrupted was dead before we could shut it off. It took hours to clean up the mess, but no amount of bleach can get rid of that image.”

I know then, watching Caitlin succumb to tears over a single, nameless casualty, that she could not have had any knowledge of the recovering subjects.

“I’m determined to find a way out of this,” I promise her in a whisper. “If we can isolate the frequencies in different victims, maybe we can figure out the key to how the nanobots work and disrupt them somehow.”

She nods, tearfully, and I squeeze her hand in reassurance.

“Just be careful, okay? Don’t let anyone know what we’re doing.”

I leave the lab and head for my dorm with renewed hope and determination. With a bit of help from Caitlin, I think I can engineer my software to recognise different frequencies, and subsequently the stage of infection in a Corrupted, if there’s any correlation to be found.

Next, I just need an Absolved to test it.

<\-----<<

“So you think you can identify an Absolved based on… _radio waves_?”

I frown at the scepticism in the archer’s tone. “I’m assuming a lot about the way the nanobots work, but yes. I need more information. I need an Absolved to study.”

“I’ll reach out, see if I can make contact with one. They’re going to be hesitant if you phrase it like that, though.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t make you put up any Uncle Sam recruitment posters. _The Arrow wants you!_ ” I exclaim, dramatically pointing one finger at him. I don’t need to see his face to know he’s rolling his eyes.

“Why haven’t A.R.G.U.S. scientists come up with this radio wave theory before?”

I shrug. “They’re looking at it like biologists. Plus, there’s the added bonus of Waller breathing down their necks. It’s kind of hard to have a breakthrough in treatment when the focus is on prevention instead. They want an immunisation, not a cure.”

He nods once, and I take a deep breath.

“I also think we need to bring Caitlin Snow in on this.”

He tenses immediately. “What?”

“She’s a low-level scientist-”

“I told you already, _nobody_ at A.R.G.U.S. can be trusted,” he growls, sounding more menacing through the scrambler.

“She’s my best friend!” I protest. “I know her. We can trust her; she would want to help.”

“It’s too much of a risk,” he counters, but I can feel his resolve wavering.

“Look, I need her help for this. I can keep her mostly in the dark for now, but if it comes to building something that can stop the Atom’s virus once and for all, we’re going to have to fill her in.”

He thinks for a moment, turning away to fidget with his weapons. He doesn’t like to concede defeat in an argument, but he knows I wouldn’t make this suggestion lightly.

“How are things going on your end?” I ask, giving him a reprieve.

“Laurel and Tommy are fine. They wanted to help, so I set up some tech at their safehouse. They can do some surveillance and contact us through the program you built if they find anything.”

“That’ll save us a lot of time,” I remark.

“I also picked up a lull in Corrupted activity near the old finance district during my last patrol. I think one of the Atom’s buyers is set up down there.”

I grin. “White collar criminals and their irony.”

“That’s nothing. Last year, we took down the Bertinelli crime family in the weapons exhibit at the Starling Museum.”

The visible smile on his face fills me with pride. That he’s able to joke about his work with the Canary is a testament to his resilience.

“We’ll see how we go with your friend,” he finally says. “I imagine we’d need her help anyway, if we found an Absolved who wanted to come forward.”

“Thank you for trusting me.”

He lets out his breath in a frustrated huff. “I’ve always trusted you. It’s not about that.”

I frown at him. “What is it about, then?”

“It’s… every time I take you back there, I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll see you, if the wrong person will find your scanner, or catch you out of bed, or overhear you talking to your friend. Malcolm Merlyn could put a bullet in your head before sunrise and I wouldn’t even know. I don’t like being powerless to protect someone so important to me.” His hand flexes as he speaks, and I take hold of it to stop the anxious movement.

“You’re important to me, too,” I admit in a gentle tone, as I would if I were wary of spooking a wild animal.

He stares at me, incredulous. “How can you say that when you don’t even know who I am?”

“I know more than you think.” Now, my words are confident, sure.

“Felicity,” he growls, but he needs to hear what I have to say.

“I might not know your name, but I know your heart. I know that you’re brave enough to fight for justice in a world hanging by a thread. I know that you loved your sister and that losing her nearly destroyed you. I know that you believe the man you were back then didn’t deserve to survive the outbreak, and I know that you’ve spent every day since then trying to become somebody else, but you can’t. There is no Before-you and After-you. You are not two different people. You’re courageous, and obstinate, and compassionate, and clever, and sometimes so completely _maddening_ , but you’re just one man that I care about very much.”

He sucks in a breath, and I realize that I’ve grasped his forearms in my earnestness. He’s so close I can see his eyelashes, unblinking as he stares at me.

“I know who you are,” I say softly, “mask or no mask.”

There’s a long, charged moment where I think I’ve forgotten to breathe. His hand lifts to the back of my neck, his gloved fingers tangling in my hair as he tilts my head back, and my eyes flutter closed.

A lingering second, and then his lips are on mine. I’d spent many restless nights imagining this moment, and everything melts away and I couldn’t care less about Corrupted or A.R.G.U.S. or the Atom, as long as he keeps kissing me.

My right hand lifts to frame his jaw, his stubble tickling my palm. I rise on tiptoe so I can wrap my other arm around his neck for support, pressing my nose into his as he smiles into my mouth.

“Felicity,” he murmurs, and I sigh as he deepens the kiss for just a moment before pulling away and just resting his forehead against mine.

Standing this close to him almost feels _more_ intimate. His thumb strokes my cheek and his eyes are flashing with everything he will not say, an impossible dichotomy of fire and ice in their blue depths, their vibrancy accentuated by the dark grease paint.

“One day,” I say softly, when the gravity of the moment becomes too much for me to remain silent, “you’ll see in yourself what _I_ see in you.”

He turns his head to press his lips against my wrist and steps back, the atmosphere between us heavier now. Under the pretence of studying the computer screen, he grips the edge of the table, his head angled away from me.

“I should get back to the compound,” I suggest, despite the fact that the night is still young. I know he needs time to process – he’s a man who survives by calculating every variable and he hadn’t prepared for this.

“We’ll take the bike,” he agrees, and I pretend not to notice the slight falter in his tone.

When we arrive back to our usual drop-off point, I give him a hesitant smile of gratitude before preparing to slip away.

“Be careful,” he says, and I realize I’m hearing his natural voice for the first time – he’s no longer using the voice modulator.

“Same goes for you, buddy,” I retort, attempting to ignore my heart pounding against my ribcage. “I’m not the one trying to combine steeplechase and archery into one sport.”

I let myself into the base, leaning my back against the door as I try to calm my pulse rate. Flashes of the kiss we shared rise from where I’d tried to suppress them, and I finally allow myself to feel _everything_.

He’s more to me than just an ally and friend, even an unattainable, undeniably attractive male presence in my otherwise mundane life.

I’m tied to him, and I can no longer walk away unscathed when this is all over.

_Shit_.

<\-----<<

I know there’s no point trying to get an early night, so I decide instead to keep my favourite guard company. We talk loosely about things of no consequence: television series we liked before the outbreak, a badminton match between some of the other civilians in the compound, our least favourite meals in the rationing system.

He’s comfortable enough to relax a little, and we sit side by side in the otherwise deserted corridor as I trace random patterns on the cold cement floor.

“Digg, can I ask you a question?”

He gives me an exasperated look that tells me he knows I will ask anyway.

“Why haven’t you reported me to Waller?”

“Plausible deniability,” he grumbles, with a half-smile. “I haven’t seen or heard anything in direct conflict with A.R.G.U.S. law. Don’t ruin that for me.”

“But you know.”

“No, Smoak, I don’t know. I don’t know why you continue to risk your life by heading out into that wasteland to do God knows what. I don’t know why you’re practically _begging_ for cold sanitation, running around under Waller’s nose. I don’t know where you go when you leave or what you take with you. I _certainly_ don’t know who it is that has you looking like _that_ every time you come back.”

I bite my lip and look down, trying my best to fight off the urge to blush.

“Most of all, I don’t know what it is that tells me I can trust you,” he says, more gently.

“The feeling’s mutual,” I assure him.

He sighs, tapping his fingers on the lid of his disposable coffee cup, the contents of which are long gone. I make a mental note to bring him refills in future – the night shifts must seem endless without proper, caffeinated sustenance.

“I served in the military before I went into private security with my brother. I was familiar with A.R.G.U.S., so, naturally, they recruited us at the first sign of the outbreak. At first, it was the kind of work I’d signed up for, rescuing the survivors, defending the base against invasion. One night, though, there was a particularly large horde of Corrupted. We lost a guy from our unit and the rest of us barely made it out of there. We got back to base, and it seemed like everything was fine, until Andy started to get sick.”

“He was infected?”

Diggle nods, looking saddened. “They isolated him and quarantined the rest of us. Once I was cleared, I went straight to the holding cells. He was Corrupted, but his eyes… there was something, a flash behind them when he saw me, like deep down _some_ part of him recognized me. But they told me there was nothing more they could do; he was too dangerous and they had to sanitize.”

I wonder if Andy was one of the redacted files I’d retrieved for the Arrow. I feel sick at the thought that he could have been in recovery, that he might have known and understood what was happening, that he might have been _terrified_.

I can’t think of anything worse than being trapped in a body that won’t obey you, facing your own execution.

Diggle offers me a real smile this time, and I wipe at my eyes with my sleeve.

“So you became a prison guard.”

“I saw Andy in the face of every Corrupted,” he confirms. “I understand that we can’t just hold people indefinitely in the hope that a cure becomes available – we don’t have the resources. I just can’t blindly trust A.R.G.U.S. anymore,” he says, lowering his voice. “I have to hope that there’s another way out of this. I have to hope that _that’s_ what you’re working towards.”

“I am,” I whisper. “I’m working with the vigilante.”

“The guy with the bow?” Diggle asks, surprised. “What can _he_ do?”

I smile enigmatically and get to my feet, brushing imaginary dust off myself.

“What makes you think it’s not what _I_ can do that makes all the difference?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has hands down some of my favourite single lines that I've ever written. I hope you all enjoyed it! Thank you so much for staying with me on this journey.
> 
> I came to thatmasquedgirl months ago desperately begging, "I've completely made up a virus and I have no idea how physiology works HELP ME!" With her input, I feel like I've managed to build something that's somewhat founded in actual medical understanding. So more than ever, I owe all the credit for this chapter to her (plus, she kinda got roped into helping me with the ENTIRE THING after that).


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t you ever get tired of looking at me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait; it has been an awful week. 
> 
> Thanks as always to thatmasquedgirl for being literally the best. Also, shoutout to one of the writers who inspires me (and she should know who she is considering her I just told her this, like, thirty minutes ago). You're all around great.
> 
> I also just wanted to share something that one of my best friends created about Original Team Arrow quite a while ago now. I always find myself coming back to it because it reminds me of all the reasons I fell in love with the show and this team, and it's a beautiful piece of writing: http://alwaysanoriginal.tumblr.com/post/92785107224
> 
> Thank you for reading!

The clock tower looms above the road like a schoolmaster reproachfully hovering over disobedient students. Sometime long ago, the bells stopped tolling on the hour, and the face that once glowed like a beacon is shattered, gaping holes half-heartedly covered with tarps that wave an eerie greeting in the wind.

I find it hard to believe that anybody could be using the structural equivalent of a ghost for shelter, but the Arrow leads me confidently to a narrow, hidden stairwell in the back alley behind it. I pretend not to notice his palm against my back, warm and reassuring; since the _incident_ , he hasn’t broached the topic about what, exactly, has changed between us.

Once inside the building, there’s a pile of junk and a tarp concealing a steel door that looks odd among the original brickwork. He enters the code and as the door swings open, there’s a birdcall, quiet yet shrill enough to carry up several flights of stairs. At the top, the Arrow motions for me to go ahead, so I slowly duck into the spacious, square room.

My first thought it that it’s cold, the broken clock face allowing a chilly breeze to sweep through the room. The air is fresh, though, free from the stench of below, so I take a deep, appreciative breath.

Laurel sits on one of two cots in the corner, her legs crossed and a beige blanket around her shoulders. I note the position of the beds, and the scuff marks on the floor indicating one has been dragged across the room until they’re barely two feet apart. She looks younger than her years, her face clean of makeup and her hair hanging straight, but she looks up with a careful smile.

Tommy’s seated in a chair by several ancient monitors, all displaying a different camera feed. His eyes gleam with devilish curiosity as he studies me.

“Well, if it isn’t our resident double agent,” he smirks.

“I prefer to think of it as _undercover_.”

Tommy opens his mouth with a grin, then meets the Arrow’s gaze over my head and seems to think better of it.

“Hey, Felicity,” Laurel says with a warm smile, standing up and casting off the blanket. “I wanted to thank you for grabbing this.” She gestures to the colourful sweater, tugging shyly at the string of the hood.

“Oh, it’s no problem. You didn’t get time to pack a bag, so it was the decent thing to do.”

“It means a lot. This belonged to my sister, before…” she trails off, not needing to elaborate.

The Arrow and Tommy begin to talk in hushed tones, so I move over to Laurel and hesitantly sit down when she motions for me to do so. She graciously hands me the blanket, as I’m shivering a little in the frigid room, and then looks down at her hands.

“Are you okay?” I ask, not sure if I’m overstepping my boundary as a casual acquaintance.

“Just a lot to think about,” she replies, softly, glancing uncertainly toward Tommy and lowering her voice further. “You went through quarantine at the compound, right?”

I frown in confusion. “Of course. Everyone does.”

“Did they… question you?” Her eyes are dark and anxious, and I can see now where her fingernails have been chewed right back to the quick.

“I guess? I mean, I was recruited very early, but I know what Barry told me, about how they asked where he’d been, how much he knew, that kind of thing.”

Laurel glances away, and the picture begins to paint itself for me. Tommy is too valuable to harm, but Laurel is both close to him, and a more accessible target for interrogation.

Not knowing what else to do, I give her my best comforting smile and change the subject, telling her instead about our work both tracking the Atom’s activity, and preparing to establish contact with the other rebel group.

“And how is my dear old Dad?” Tommy asks as he drops down onto the bed beside Laurel, throwing an arm over her shoulders.

“Still looking for any excuse to put a bullet in someone’s skull,” I answer, before wincing when I realise that he might not like to hear such venom in my words about his flesh and blood.

Tommy sees my expression, though, and quickly reassures me. “He’s always been complicated. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was no longer the man I knew, even the absent, emotionally distant father he’d been after my mother died when I was young.”

There’s a brief moment where Tommy glances up to meet the Arrow’s gaze, but it’s over too quickly for me to even be sure of what I saw.

“We owe you, Felicity,” Laurel says. “I was so relieved to get out of that place.”

“It was the Arrow’s idea,” I admit. “I didn’t really do much.”

Both of them look up in surprise at the vigilante, bemused.

“You call him the Arrow?” Tommy questions with a laugh in his eyes.

“What else should I call him?” I shrug.

“It’s cute,” Laurel defends me, elbowing Tommy in the ribs as he tries to suppress a snort.

One of my motion detectors picks up a figure down in the street, a lone Corrupted passing by in peace. Even so, we take it as our cue to leave, the Arrow descending the stairs more cautiously than before.

Once we’re out in the open, he weaves his fingers through mine, and for perhaps the first time in my life, I manage to keep my mouth shut.

Running through empty streets under the stars, hand in hand, I can almost forget that we’re locked in a constant battle for our lives.

Almost.

<\-----<<

With my access to A.R.G.U.S. intel and our recon on the Atom’s associates, we know a buy is going down tonight between a proxy, and a shark of a woman named Isabel Rochev. Before the outbreak, she specialized in hostile takeovers of vulnerable corporations; the Arrow barks a short laugh and calls her a _power-hungry succubus_ when facial recognition turns up a match.

I have an anxious feeling in my gut, more than just the usual concern when he goes out in the field. We are closer to catching the Atom than we ever have been, but I know my archer is more than a match for a couple of wealthy criminals and their hired muscle.

_When did I start thinking of him as mine?_ I wonder.

He is checking his weapons, sliding each arrow into his quiver with smooth, deliberate movements. It’s almost like a ritual to psych himself up and sharpen his focus, so I watch with quiet admiration.

“Don’t you ever get tired of looking at me?” he asks.

“Never ever,” I answer, truthfully, giving him a cheeky smile despite the uneasiness that swirls in my stomach. Slowly, I reach out to tuck his comm unit behind his ear.

“Be careful out there, okay?” I murmur, and the slight smile on his face fades into something more serious, more intense.

“Felicity,” he sighs, his gloved fingers slowly tracing a line from my temple, down my cheek and coming to rest on my neck. “I never expected… I never saw you coming. I had – well, thought I had – good reasons for not getting too close, for not letting you see beneath the mask, but with you… I forget.” He lets his hand fall back to his side, and his fingers twitch out of habit.

“This doesn’t have to be anything,” I say, softly, even as my heart aches in protest. “What we’re doing is so much more important than just two people.”

“It already _is_ something,” he growls. “I couldn’t stop it.”

My skin prickles and my breath stutters, but I can’t tear my gaze away from him. The tension is overpowering, even as we stand apart, silent and unmoving, and I long for him to touch me, or kiss me, or _anything_ just to end it.

“I have nothing to hide from you.” His voice is softer, but his words are sure. I know he feels it, just as I do, even if neither of us can put it into words. This war has wound us together, soldered until there’s no going back.

I could reach up now, push back his hood and remove the mask, and I know he would not stop me. His eyelids flutter closed in anticipation as my hands lift, my fingers running along the stubble on his jaw.

I stretch up and press a kiss against his lips, chaste but firm, and step back. He looks stunned, his mouth falling slightly open in confusion, and I have to consciously refrain from going back for more.

I don’t need him to be more than who he is, and I want him to know that. When the time comes to take off the hood, it won’t change the way I feel.

Our stolen moment ends abruptly with an alert from one of my programs.

He grabs his bow and heads out, walking with a renewed purpose, a stronger determination to fight. I hurry back to my station, already compartmentalising to get my focus on our mission.

The brief interlude is over. It’s time to go back into the inferno.

<\-----<<

Unfortunately for us, A.R.G.U.S. satellites have been taken offline for security upgrades, so I only have eyes on the exterior of the building. It’s the first of many signs that tonight is no ordinary mission, and it’s frustrating for me to be rendered practically useless at such a crucial time.

“Heavy artillery on both sides,” the vigilante relays quietly. “Do you think you could jam their frequencies on my signal?”

“I could override them with white noise,” I confirm. “Give me a sec.”

There’s a pause, then a slight hitch in his breathing. “Felicity, Seldon’s not here.”

“What? He has to be.”

“No, it’s someone else. He’s wearing some sort of mechanical suit; I can’t see his face.”

“I’ve got Rochev,” I tell him, following her progress into the building with a parade of goons behind her. The Arrow is silent, and I wish I’d thought to install a bodycam in his suit. “What’s going on?

“The Atom is here. Seldon…” he pauses, as if listening. “Seldon is dead. The Atom is done letting amateurs do his business.”

I know a retreat at this stage is impossible – if the tech falls into Rochev’s hands, it may do far greater damage, though I find myself wishing the Arrow would call it off anyway. We had not prepared for the Atom to show personally at the meet, and I can’t see a thing inside those walls.

Instead, I hear. His breath hitches slightly as he drops like a jungle cat, and there’s a whistle of an arrow as he releases it into a thug, who drops with a grunt. There’s a rhythm to his strikes, and a melody in Rochev’s furious curses.

“Stop,” the Arrow roars suddenly, and I can tell the Atom has tried to make a break for freedom. “You have failed this city. Thousands of people have lost their lives because-“

The abrupt clap of gunfire sends chills down my spine. There is nothing but chaos, shouts barely audible above the thunder of bullets, and I am helpless to do anything but sit there and listen.

“Arrow?” I whimper, my voice cracking. “Answer me!”

There’s a hiss of static, and for a moment my hopes lift, only to come crashing down when the sound cuts out entirely.

The pounding of my heart is a stark contrast to the sudden silence of my earpiece. I take it out, swallowing back tears, desperately trying to push down my panic. I could go out to look for him; I know his tactics, I know _him_. But even as I fix my hair and tuck my taser into my belt, I know that it’s too dangerous. A.R.G.U.S. had somehow intercepted the meet; maybe they’d even known the Arrow would be there, but either way, they will not stop searching.

_At least until they find a body,_ my mind unhelpfully supplies.

For two heart-stopping minutes, I watch the exterior cams, until finally Malcolm Merlyn charges out, signalling wildly to his team. My breath comes shuddering out in an involuntary cry of relief – maybe he did make it out.

“Think, Felicity, _think_ ,” I whisper to myself, fiercely. I scour the nearby feeds, until I land on one that covers Juniper and 7th, and then my mind clicks and I’m putting on my protective gear in record time and flying out the door.

I hear the breathing first when I reach the hidden stairs, and find him covered in blood behind a dumpster. Swearing, I pull his arm over my shoulder and, by some miracle or rush of adrenalin, manage to get him on his feet. He’s barely conscious, only _just_ lucid, but we stumble halfway up the interior staircase until Tommy comes thundering down in a panic.

With the archer lying on the makeshift med table, Laurel hunched on the bed in the corner looking completely blank, and Tommy staring at me in expectant terror, I lock everything away in my mind and fight back my body’s urge to collapse.

“Med kit, gauze, towels, shirts, anything,” I bark at Tommy, my voice sounding foreign even to my own ears. He obeys in silence, and I look at the Arrow, his hood slightly askew, blood leaking out through holes in the leather.

“I’m going to take his jacket off,” I say, as much to myself as to Tommy. “Get ready to put pressure on the wounds.”

My hands do not shake as I pull the zip down, revealing a saturated undershirt that I cut away. _He needs you_ , I scold myself. _Freak out later_.

Before I lose my nerve, I push back his hood, my bloody fingers brushing against his forehead. It takes a moment, but I recognize him, and now it’s time for me to save the life of a man long thought dead.

The Arrow is Oliver Queen.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can see why you mean so much to him.”

**_[Before]_ **

_It’s just a normal day, manning the phones at the Nerd Herd desk._

_A normal day, meaning that’s the sixth guy who’s called with a tech problem, only to ask to speak to ‘someone who knows what they’re doing’ when a female tries to help._

_Frustrated, I put the guy on hold – I like to watch the line blink – and roll my eyes at my friend Myron, who’s a TV salesman. “Want to talk to a sexist jerk while I feed you everything you need to say?”_

_He grins back at me. “Must be Wednesday. Are you sure you don’t want me to stammer my way through it and waste an hour or so of his time?”_

_“As great as that would be, I’m content with giving him instructions that will wipe his GTA save file. It’s unavoidable, you know, with this kind of issue,” I wink._

_Twenty minutes and one grumpy but paying customer later, I’m focused intently on my computer screen when somebody says my name._

_“Felicity Smoak?”_

_Scratch that. A very attractive somebody is saying my name, with charming eyes and a deceptively innocent expression._

_“Hi, I’m Oliver Queen.”_

_“I know who you are,” I blurt, automatically. How could I not recognize the first-born heir of one of the richest families in town? He’s on the cover of every tabloid, even made the front page of the Herald once or twice. I have to admit, with a bit of stubble and shorter hair, he’s positively devastating._

_He looks at me expectantly and I realize that I’ve missed a question._

_“Uh, what?” I flinch at how unintelligent I sound._

_“I seem to be having some problems with my computer,” he repeats, patiently. “Somebody told me you were the person to see about that.”_

_Blushing, I clumsily start clearing papers and pieces of equipment off my desk. “Yes! Yes. Definitely. That’s me. I’m Felicity.”_

_He briefly explains the problems he’s having, with a better understanding of technology than I’d expected. I hold out my hand and he passes over the laptop, a sleek model in slate grey. My mouth falls open as I pass my hand reverently over the cool surface._

_“But this is…”_

_“I know,” he says, his mouth lifting at the corner in amusement._

_“But it’s not even supposed to be available until next year…”_

_“I know.”_

_“I can’t believe I’m holding this right now.”_

_“Felicity,” he interrupts, smiling broadly now. “Can you fix it?”_

_“Do thestrals shit in the woods?” I fire back, only to look up at the answering silence and flush a deeper red. “I definitely just brought up animal faeces in front of a complete stranger. Not just animal faeces, but mythical animal faeces. And I just said the word faeces a bunch of times. For the love of God, somebody stop me.”_

_He lets out what is unmistakably a laugh. “You can, then. Great. Should I come back?”_

_“No!” I say, a bit too enthusiastically. “Just wait… I can just…” I open the panel, fiddle around with a few wires, and reboot the machine. It takes two minutes to get through the mediocre password protection and start a program to recover his files._

_“There. You should probably upgrade your security settings. My eight-year-old cousin could get through this. It’s like asking a burglar not to walk through an open door.”_

_“Thanks. How much do I owe you?”_

_I shrug, looking down shyly. “Nothing. It was an easy fix, and kind of an honor to get to handle tech like this. Just… upgrade the security, like I said, okay?”_

_He frowns like he doesn’t believe me, but chooses not to argue._

_“Thank you for this, Felicity.”_

_I give him a snappy salute, which fizzles out halfway through when I realise what I’m doing. What is it about him that just completely melts my brain into a puddle of goo?_

_I watch him leave, and subsequently have to look away quickly when he glances back over his shoulder, still with that heart-stopping smile on his face._

_I’d like to think that my humiliation made it somewhat memorable, but I know I’m just one woman in a long line for Oliver Queen. I’ll never see him again._

_After all, I’m just some IT girl who talked about excrement and groped his computer._

<\-----<<

My first thought is that most of the wounds look manageable, which is an odd thing to think about a man riddled with bullets. It’s only the one just below his left shoulder that still seems to be flowing, and I try to calm my mind and remember the one discussion we’d had about gunshot wounds.

I pull on a pair of latex gloves and, with careful fingers, prod about for the bullet. Tommy gags but keeps it together, and when I drop the offending piece of lead on the ground, we breathe a sigh of relief together.

“Sutures next,” I whisper to myself, now in search of the source of the bleed, and I make a mental note to thank Tommy later for knowing to sponge away the excess blood without me having to ask. It takes a moment to find the nick, and I try to ignore the catapulting of my stomach as I manage one stitch before spinning around and getting sick into the trashcan that Tommy helpfully slid to me.

“It’s stopping,” he tells me, looking a bit less like he’s about to cry.

Nodding and breathing through my nausea, I get him on an IV, which is thankfully something we’d been able to practice. I’m careful to prepare the line so there’s no chance of deadly air bubbles in the blood flowing from the bag I’d somehow remembered to grab on my way out of the foundry. Miraculously, sliding the needle into the vein in his inner arm doesn’t cause me to faint, despite my long-standing hatred of pointy things. The heart monitor is next, which is straightforward enough, and although his blood pressure is lower than I’d like, it isn’t declining.

One by one, I suture and dress all the wounds, aligning my breaths with the steady beep of his pulse to keep myself calm. I then spend fifteen minutes frantically scrubbing dried blood out of my fingernails and the creases in my skin.

Only when the smell of antiseptic drowns out the tang of iron do I allow myself to think. _Oliver Queen is the vigilante_ runs around my skull in a looping monotone, occasionally sprinkled with _Oliver Queen is alive_ and _Oliver Queen kissed me._

My mind draws connections and fills in gaps faster than I can process them. He’d risked everything to save his _friends_ from Waller’s grasp. Tommy looks concerned, but he’s retreated to where Laurel still sits in blank silence, rubbing her back in reassurance.

“You knew,” I say to him, not even bothering to phrase it as a question.

“He told us the night he broke us out,” Tommy confirms. “It was the only way he could convince us we were safe.”

I imagine how it must have felt to get a best friend back from the dead, only for him to not be the same man he once was, and I feel a pang of sympathy for both of them. Pulling up a chair, I cover Oliver with a shock blanket to protect him from the cold, rest my hand on his good shoulder, and sit, only now becoming aware of the exhaustion gripping my entire body.

Belatedly, I realise that sunrise is approaching and I should have left for the compound an hour ago. My regular clothes are unsalvageable, but I can grab something back at the foundry; I have to retrieve my S.I. uniform and bag anyway.

“He’s not going to like it if you go out alone.”

“Do I have a choice?”

Tommy gently disentangles himself from Laurel, who seems to have fallen into a doze, and walks over to sit beside me.

“You could stay.” Sighing, he looks at Oliver and lowers his voice a little further. “I’ve known him for almost our whole lives, so I can see how much it kills him every time he has to take you back there.”

“You think I haven’t considered that?” I demand. “I know that if I disappear, they’re going to question my friends, maybe even find a reason to blame them. They’ll find out that Caitlin gave me information, or Cisco left a gate unsecured, or the guard in the imprisonment sector constantly looked the other way. I won’t leave them unprotected just to save my own skin.”

Tommy is silent, but there’s a hint of admiration in his eyes.

“Is she okay?” I change the subject with a nod over towards Laurel.

“She’s grieving. She’d always hoped her sister was still out there; it was one of the reasons we let ourselves get caught by A.R.G.U.S., because we wanted to check if anyone in the compound had seen her. But Ollie told us yesterday that he saw Sara die.”

“Sara,” I repeat, another puzzle piece sliding into place. “The Canary.”

Tommy nods. “Their father gave them a bird when they were younger. I think it was a signal that only Laurel would recognise, to let her know if she heard the name, that Sara was okay.”

It all makes sense, why Oliver and Sara had cared enough about each other to risk their own safety, how Oliver had known that Malcolm would recognize her. Once the masks came off, they were two friends who’d known each other before the outbreak, not two allies in a war.

I look again out the broken clock face, seeing how the sky has lightened a few shades. “Will you be okay here with both of them?”

Tommy smiles, grimly. “I have to be, don’t I?”

Shyly, I give Oliver a gentle kiss on the forehead, before sliding on my helmet in preparation to leave.

“I can see why you mean so much to him,” Tommy remarks. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him for you.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I promise, giving Oliver one last lingering look, “hell or high water.”

Once I’m out in the open air, there’s nobody to see the tears fall.

<\-----<<

Like watching paint dry, the day passes painfully slowly. I learn from Cisco and Barry that Malcolm ran last night’s op without Waller’s permission, so tensions between the two of them are at an all-time high.

“They want very different things,” Barry explains. “Waller wants the vigilante captured alive, but Malcolm is still furious about Tommy, and he gave a kill order. They can’t find a body, so they don’t even know if he’s still a threat.”

“The Atom will go to ground now, too,” Cisco adds. “It’ll be a while before the rat crawls out of its nest again. It’s a complete failure on all sides.”

At nightfall, I become even more anxious. What if something went wrong and he coded, and Tommy couldn’t save him? When it’s finally late enough to sneak away, I wrap myself in the grey sweater I stole from the foundry on my way home this morning. Before I can stop myself, I breathe in his scent from the fabric. _I would know if something had happened_ , I tell myself. _I would feel it._

Instinctively, I head for the main base, knowing somehow that if Oliver had woken up, not even Tommy could stop him from making his way back there. Even as I reach the door, my throat feels tight at the thought that I could be walking into a cold, empty lair.

I brace myself and walk in, and my eyes fall on the solitary figure in the centre of the room. Dressed in leathers but with his hood lowered, he turns at the sound of my footsteps.

I almost trip in my haste to descend the stairs, wordlessly flinging myself at him. The soft exhalation of breath as we collide betrays the pain he’s in, but his arms are strong and warm banded around my back. I press my forehead into his uninjured shoulder, swallowing down the hot prickle of tears behind my eyes.

“I didn’t know if you’d come back,” he murmurs into my hair.

“I’ll always come back.” After a few more moments, I reluctantly let go of him, then scowl and playfully slap his arm. “But _that’s_ for not staying at the clock tower until you were fully recovered, you stubborn _oaf_.”

He shrugs, a dopey smile still on his face. “It’s just a scratch.”

I scoff, not even bothering to answer him, and head over to my computers.

“So you haven’t been scared away?” he asks.

“By you nearly dying?” I reply flippantly, knowing perfectly well what he means.

His expression is serious now, and his hand is twitching. “ _I_ haven’t scared you away?”

I regard him for a long moment. “Oliver,” I begin, but his lips twitch into a half-smile and I tilt my head at him in confusion. “What?”

“I like hearing you say my name,” he explains, and part of me longs to fling aside all the important, boring stuff to get right to the kissing.

“Focus!” I exclaim, but he walks over to lean against my desk and I find myself holding his hand anyway. “Nothing has changed for me. I still feel the same way about you as I did before the mask came off. If and when you want to talk about… everything… I’ll be here to listen, but who you are in name is not the part that matters to me. It’s who you are in _here_.” I place my palm over his chest and look up into his eyes, blushing a little when I see the fiery intensity contained within them. “And now you’ve got me sounding like a Lifetime movie. I should have gone with Shakespeare’s rose thing instead.”

“I didn’t study Shakespeare at any of the four schools I dropped out of,” he laughs. “But thank you, Felicity.” He doesn’t need to say anything else – the sincerity in his tone communicated all his thoughts clearer than any words.

“So the Atom’s gone back into hiding now,” I say, lightly, changing the subject. “Merlyn’s blunder has probably set us back months.”

“Actually, it’s come at a good time,” Oliver replies, and I lift an eyebrow at him in question. “A group of anti-A.R.G.U.S. rebels has agreed to make contact. They say they have an Absolved in their numbers.”

Hope rises in me, like a wave slowly gaining momentum as it approaches the shore. “They’ll talk to us?”

Oliver nods. “They won’t sign on for anything invasive, but they’re open to preliminary testing. They’re prepared to meet tomorrow night.”

“You should be on bedrest!” I protest, but it’s only half-hearted. With an opportunity like this, any time wasted could be our downfall.

“Is your portable scanner functional?”

“Her name is STELLA,” I correct, “and yes, at least as much as she can be when I haven’t been able to test her.”

“Then we should get planning,” he says, seamlessly switching into vigilante-mode as I pull up some maps of Starling on my monitors. “It’s time to make some friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stop right there! If you're not already reading The Edge of Hope by thatmasquedgirl, you should go do that right this moment. I have had the INCREDIBLE pleasure of working with this phenomenal writer both on my story ('MASQUE HELP I don't understand how medical procedures work') and on hers ('I don't think there should be a comma there I'M SORRY PLEASE DON'T FIRE ME') and this AU is just... life-altering. There are so many great things to come that I can't spoil but you will NOT regret it. And definitely take the time to check out the rest of the OFBB stories that have all started posting this past week! I'm really excited about everything I've read so far. 
> 
> Thanks so much guys! It's lovely to hear from you guys in the comments. You can find me on tumblr and twitter as @ohmyemilybett if you ever feel like continuing the conversation (but I never shut up so you've been warned).


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Good thing this outfit is a real mood-killer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, just dropping a quick update; as usual, thanks to thatmasquedgirl for all of her help and support, and thanks to all of you for reading and commenting and leaving kudos. Feel free to drop by my tumblr or twitter at @ohmyemilybett. Enjoy!

Like something out of a horror movie, the outer fringe of the city is desolate, crawling with Corrupted, and littered with bodies. Here, the dead have been left unburied, dragged far away enough to not pose a threat to the living, corpses cast away to the wild animals that call this area home.

Our rendezvous point, a hospital that was abandoned years before the outbreak, is not ideal, tactically. There are too many open corners, the line of sight is obstructed, and we’ve got the low ground. Oliver is on high alert, his body language telegraphing how uncomfortable he is with this location, but we both know that the others are testing us to see if we’re willing to put ourselves at a disadvantage.

We wait in complete silence, watching dazed, listless Corrupted wander past in small groups. We haven’t been forced to engage, but Oliver has his buzzing arrows ready, and he hasn’t left me uncovered since we stepped outside the walls of the foundry.

A figure materializes out of the darkness, a person about my height, red hood of their jacket pulled over to conceal their face. I give Oliver a meaningful look, and he reluctantly lowers his bow.

“You have my word,” he growls through the modulator. “I won’t harm you.”

“Good,” the person replies, and the voice is young and male. “Show me the scanner you want to use on my friend.”

I carefully step forward, holding out the unit until he takes it, evidently to check it’s not concealing a weapon. After a quick glance over it, he nods and passes it back to me.

“You can call me Arsenal. We’re not fond of real names around here.”

“He’s Arrow,” I offer, pointing at Oliver. “And I’m…” I trail off, trying to think of a codename.

“Firewall,” Oliver interrupts, and I turn to him with a surprised smile.

“Follow me. Stay alert,” Arsenal instructs, and I can feel my vigilante bristle next to me at the thought of a kid ordering him around.

It’s a winding and complex path that we follow back to Arsenal’s base, but he’s clearly practiced at avoiding cameras and Corrupted hotspots. Finally, we’re wandering into a former department store. Everything worth taking has been looted; naked mannequins lay on the tiled floors, limbs twisted into grotesque positions. Arsenal leads us to a goods elevator and pries open the door, revealing the cavernous darkness of a shaft.

Without hesitating, he climbs down, his hands gripping a chain that hangs as an aid. Oliver glances at me, and I swallow hard.

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” I whine, softly.

“Hold onto me tightly,” is his reply, and then he’s got a strong one-armed grip on me as he uses the other to climb down.

At the bottom, I can see that the space is a huge stock reserve, fairly untouched, still full of equipment and goods. Piles of pillows and blankets are dotted around the space, and there are a few people milling about, looking uncertain but hopeful.

“Sin,” Arsenal says, gesturing to a slim teenage girl with short, dark hair and a leather jacket. Her expression is distrustful, but she walks toward us anyway. “We found Sin a few months ago. She’d fallen into a maintenance chute and been trapped; we followed the sound until we found her.”

“I was Corrupted,” Sin interjects. “But after I fell, I had patches where I was myself again, more and more frequently for longer periods of time. Then one day, I woke up and saw three people pointing guns at me.”

“The virus was almost out of her system by then,” Arsenal explains. “Once we realized she was recovering, we sedated her for extraction and brought her back here. After a few more days of isolation, it was completely gone.”

“She can’t infect you?” Oliver asks.

“None of us have gotten sick yet.”

I’m writing notes as they speak, my mind working furiously overtime. It seems that if a Corrupted is kept isolated, with no chance of reinfection, their system will start to fight off the virus. That would explain why A.R.G.U.S. test subjects had started to show signs of improvement after several days of containment.

“You have a scanner to test on me?” Sin demands, her sharp eyes on me.

“Yes,” I reply eagerly. “I think I’ve found the reason Absolved and recovering subjects register on the original scanners, and I’ve tweaked one a little so it should be able to differentiate. Oh, but you’re the first reported Absolved I’ve met, so I might need a few more numbers for my algorithm…”

I ask Sin some further questions about what she remembers of the time she was infected and the time she began to recover while the other members of the group keep their distance. Oliver prowls around me, studying them suspiciously and half-listening to my conversation.

“Okay, so, this is the original setting of the scanner,” I say, pointing it at Arrow with no reaction, then pointing it towards Sin and hearing the warning tone. “Just to demonstrate. This is the new setting I’ve programmed in…”

This time, there’s a gentle, melodic sound, and the screen flashes with the word _Absolved_. To test, I point it at the Arrow, then Arsenal in turn, and it flashes _UnCorrupted_ for both of them. “I’ll need to run some numbers on active Corrupted to refine it,” I say, unable to control my smile. “But see this, here? It registers that the frequency of the nanobots in your system is low enough to indicate no risk of further infection.”

Sin’s eyes light up as she reads the screen, and the others begin to crowd around to take a look.

“I’ve also programmed it to save the data it reads from each scan. In theory, it should be able to calculate the severity of infection and the length of time it takes for the virus to die out.”

As the others murmur excitedly over the scanner and start to test it on each other, Oliver grabs my hand and squeezes, a silent gesture of pride.

“If you would be open to it, I’d like to bring a real doctor next time, to run some basic tests. And if any of you need treatment for anything,” I say, gesturing vaguely at the rest of them.

“A doctor?” a skeptical voice interrupts. “From A.R.G.U.S.? No way.”

My eyes fall on the young girl, maybe seventeen years old, with shoulder-length brown hair and big blue eyes. She seems familiar, but I can’t place her.

“Speedy, _Firewall_ is from A.R.G.U.S.,” Arsenal sighs.

“Exactly, and I don’t trust her.” The girl called Speedy puts her hands on her hips.

Oliver’s hand tightens around mine, and I glance sideways at him, perplexed. “Look, if it makes you feel safer, you can come to our base,” I say, and he gives a stiff nod of acknowledgement.

“We can organize something,” Arsenal agrees, as Sin makes a murmur of assent. “I’ll contact you in a few days’ time.”

I glance over to where they have a remedial computer setup, monitoring a couple of cameras. “I can upgrade that for you, too. Maybe set up some kind of communication between our systems.”

“We’d appreciate that. And you could take any supplies you need from here in return,” he says, indicating the tall shelves full of boxes and racks of clothing.

Oliver squeezes my hand again, and then voices a gruff goodbye before practically dragging me out of there. We’re out in the open streets, travelling at a good clip back to the foundry, his breaths becoming more and more ragged, when I finally pull my arm out of his grasp.

“What’s going on?” I demand in a whisper. His eyes are wild, brimming with tears when he looks at me, and my heart plummets in fear. “What is it?”

“My sister.”

A feeling of clarity sweeps over me, even as he voices his next words.

“She’s alive.”

<\-----<<

When we make it back to the lair, Oliver rips off his leathers and paces around the room in anguish, his hands running through his hair as he mutters to himself. I don’t know how to comfort him, so I wait patiently on his cot in the corner, watching him in perfect silence.

“Speedy was my nickname for her when she was little,” he finally growls. “When I saw her, I just didn’t believe it, not until I heard the name. I thought I’d finally lost it, that I was seeing a ghost. I thought she _died_ …”

“But she didn’t,” I say, gently. “That’s a good thing, right?”

“If I’d known, I could have looked for her! I could have found her so much sooner; I could have protected her.”

“It looks like she’s done a decent job of protecting herself,” I point out.

Slowly, he walks over and sits beside me, and I lean my head against his shoulder as he wraps his arm around me.

“The last thing my father told me before he died was that Thea wasn’t his daughter,” he admits. “My parents were both dead and I didn’t get to be angry at them for lying to us all those years, and Thea was gone; she was in the house when rioters set it alight.”

Yet another puzzle piece is made clear to me, then. “Malcolm Merlyn.”

Oliver nods, his face darkening. “I figured it out, when I thought about all the times when my father was away on business, probably having his own affairs. Tommy and I spent every moment together when we were kids, so it didn’t seem all that strange that his dad and my mom were friends, too.”

“Did Malcolm know?” I ask.

“Not at first. I think he found out when Thea was about thirteen, but I can’t be sure.”

We remain quiet for a while, but Oliver seems much calmer, his breathing evening out.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I won’t lie to her,” he answers. “She deserves to know who I am. And Tommy deserves to know he has a sister.”

I murmur my agreement, and he presses a soft kiss against the top of my head.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“Don’t mention it.”

My computers chime a warning that it’s nearing sunrise, so I sit up and start pulling on my boots as he grabs his gear again.

“I wish I didn’t have to go,” I say, spying the forlorn look on his face. “I’ll talk to Caitlin today, if I can. We’re getting close to the end. Recovery from the virus is possible, right? We saw the proof with our own eyes.”

“I know,” he agrees, “but it means that even more is at stake when you walk back into that compound.” He pulls me close to kiss me, slowly and gently in a way that makes me suddenly feel too warm. I let him continue for a few moments before wriggling out of his grip.

“Come on, we have to get going.” I pull the S.I. helmet over my head and cross my eyes at him from behind the clear fibreglass panel. “Good thing this outfit is a real mood-killer.”

“I don’t know about that,” Oliver remarks, and he smirks when he sees the way my cheeks turn scarlet.

I get him back, though, when we’re on the bike and my hands rest a _little_ lower on his abdomen than he’s used to.

And if he drives a little slower for it, I won’t tell.

<\-----<<

Caitlin is completely speechless as I fill her in on everything that I’ve been doing with the vigilante.

“She’s recovered from the virus,” I say, showing her my scanning unit. “See? Look how low her frequency is.”

“You built that?” Caitlin asks, her voice rising in disbelief.

“Modified it, yeah. You should run it on all of the Corrupted that we have in containment down here, because the algorithm will get more and more accurate with each subject.”

“And you want me to _leave the compound_ with you?” she continues, her voice lowering to a whisper.

“Well, I don’t really know how to take her blood and all that kind of science-y stuff,” I say, then hesitate. “Actually, I have learned how to take blood, but the rest of the exams are beyond me.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been sneaking out every week to go meet up with a stranger.”

“Sometimes more than once a week, and he’s hardly a stranger,” I admit, and then cringe under her dubious stare. “Sorry, not important.”

“You’re _involved_?” she squeaks.

“Look,” I say, ignoring her question. “The only people in here that I can trust with this are you and Cisco. With your help, we can learn enough about the disease to hopefully be able to eradicate it.”

“But you’re asking me to believe that this whole time, I’ve been working for the villain,” she says. “You might believe this vigilante when he says A.R.G.U.S. is corrupt, but there might be a simple explanation for it.”

“I’ve seen the evidence myself. It’s not a mistake or a misunderstanding, Caitlin. It’s genocide.”

She’s quiet for a moment.

“Just come out with me tomorrow night,” I beg. “You can see the subject and all the data that we have and decide for yourself. I won’t ask you to come again.”

After another pause, I decide to leave her with her thoughts and prepare to stand up.

“What’s it like out there?”

“Cold,” I say, truthfully. “And dangerous. But at least it’s the honest kind of danger, the enemy you know. In here, it’s disguised itself as an ally, and it’s lying in wait for when you least expect it.”

“I’ll do it,” she decides. “Because it’s you asking.”

“Thank you!” I exclaim, flinging my arms around her as she flinches in surprise. “You’re my best friend, you know that?”

“And you’re mine, too,” she says, hugging me back. “So please, _please_ , don’t get yourself killed.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think it’s time we had a chat.”

Since I only have one S.I. suit, Oliver provided some protective gear for Caitlin to wear while she’s outside of the compound. She looks ridiculous in it – it’s several sizes too big, and the helmet slips sideways on her head.

“I haven’t been outside in two years,” she breathes, anxiously. “What am I doing?”

“You’re being a hero,” I say, adjusting my own gear before reaching to fix hers. “Don’t worry. The Arrow will make sure you’re completely safe.”

I poke my head out the gate and see him waiting in our usual spot. Grinning at Caitlin, who grimaces slightly at me in return, I slip out and close the door behind her. Obediently, she follows me to where the Arrow stands, without his bike this time.

“Arrow, this is Dr. Snow,” I say, and my friend is too tongue-tied to greet him.

“We should get moving,” he rumbles, back under the modulator. “Our contact is due to arrive within the hour.”

The path to the foundry is like second nature to me, so I find myself constantly looking back to help guide Caitlin, being sure to lead her away from any body disposal areas. Oliver follows along behind, his bow lowered but ready to defend us at the barest hint of danger.

Caitlin is still stunned when we arrive in the foundry, her wide eyes taking in everything from the training equipment to my computer setup to the rumpled cot in the corner. I slip off my S.I. uniform and catch the sweater Oliver tosses to me. It’s part of our routine now, that I’ll shed the layer that ties me to the enemy and replace it instead with him.

“You’ve briefed her on the subject?” Oliver asks me, and I nod.

“All ready to go. Today we used STELLA on the captive Corrupted, so we have a little more data to work with.”

“Good,” he says, sounding pleased beneath the short word, and Caitlin glances curiously between the two of us.

I help her set up some of her equipment that we’d managed to smuggle out, along with some that we have handy. I prattle on about how Oliver was almost fatally shot – by Malcolm Merlyn’s bullet, no less – and Caitlin gasps when she realizes I patched him up.

“When on _Earth_ did you learn how to fix a nicked artery?”

“About the same time this guy was on the table beneath me,” I say, pointing my thumb backwards over my shoulder at Oliver, then blushing when I realise how the words came out. “I mean, he was bleeding out, so it wasn’t in _that_ way or anything.”

Still impressed and ignoring my penchant for embarrassing myself, Caitlin politely asks Oliver if she can take a look at the wound for him. She stares at a spot on his jacket the whole time, but it’s the first time she’s addressed him directly, so it’s an improvement. Oliver shrugs and unzips his jacket, pulling aside his undershirt without dislodging the hood. She prods interestedly at the area, humming her approval.

“It looks good, healing nicely. I’d probably recommend some antibiotics, if you could get hold of them.”

“They’re just in complete abundance around here,” Oliver deadpans, and Caitlin flinches when I laugh.

He zips up his jacket, just as my motion detectors pick up Arsenal, Thea, and Sin arriving in the main foyer of Verdant. He heads up the stairs to meet them, and I turn to Caitlin, who has gone pale all over again.

“They’re just kids,” I tell her, quietly. “Teenagers, all three of them.”

There’s a clatter of footsteps as they follow Oliver down the stairs. Thea saunters brazenly up to Caitlin, studying her face carefully.

“Speedy,” she says, in a way that doesn’t _quite_ make it clear she’s introducing herself. “You must be the doctor.”

“I must be,” Caitlin answers, nervously. “I was in medical research when the outbreak happened, anyway. I have a doctorate.”

Sin steps forward while her two friends inspect the rest of the room, Arsenal exclaiming over my tech station as he goes. “You can call me Sin,” she says, a shade friendlier than Thea. “Let’s get this over with.”

Oliver stands in stoic silence, and I can tell his eyes are following his sister as she prowls around in a way that’s oddly reminiscent of _somebody_ else I know. Arsenal asks me a question about my security setup, so I start showing him how it works, as his expression grows more and more intrigued.

“You were right, Firewall,” Sin calls across the room at me, and I see Caitlin blink once at the pseudonym. “Your fancy ass machine works.”

“Her preliminary blood work is consistent with that of somebody who’s infected with the virus, but the bots aren’t active,” Caitlin says. “I haven’t got the facilities to examine it any further, but as she’s in good health, I would have to conclude that she is a true Absolved.”

“And the scanner?” Thea demands.

“I’ve compared her results to those of the currently active Corrupted we have back at the compound, and they are substantially lower, almost negligible. Based on this information, it confirms the hypothesis that the lower the frequency of the nanobots, the closer the subject is to full recovery.”

“Do you know what this means?” I exclaim, beaming at Oliver. “We have the key to figuring out how to defeat the virus. If we can find a way to manually lower or even disrupt the frequency of the nanobots, we will be able to cure Corrupted.”

“If it just runs out with time,” Arsenal questions, “why are people staying sick for so long?”

“I believe it replicates if it’s transferred live to a new host,” Caitlin explains. “And then, once it’s acclimated to the new host system, it can be transferred back and replicate again. That’s why isolation is the best way to ensure it can’t reinfect its host. The nanobots just die out, like a flat battery, if they don’t find a new host. I presume,” she continues, a disgusted look on her face, “that the injections we have been giving our Corrupted subjects, under the guise of testing a cure, have actually been reintroducing strains of the bots into their system, to keep them infected.”

“That confirms it then,” Oliver says, darkly. “A.R.G.U.S. knows the _how_ of Absolved, even if they don’t understand the _why_.”

“We can’t let on that we know,” I tell Caitlin. “Not until the time is right.”

She nods, a look of fierce determination on her face. “Thank you, Sin.”

“You’ve done all the work,” the younger girl shrugs. “There was always this doubt that I’d suddenly go rabid again and attack all our friends.”

“That won’t happen,” Caitlin assures her.

“I know that now. Thanks.”

“We should be heading back,” Thea interrupts, and Arsenal nods in a way that betrays a stronger relationship than just allies between the two of them, a hint that Oliver thankfully misses.

“I’ll take the two of you back to the compound, too,” Oliver suggests, reaching out to touch my shoulder as I wilt slightly in disappointment. “I know it’s earlier than usual, but it’s safer this way, and you need the rest.”

“I can rest _here_ ,” I whine, gesturing at his bed. Caitlin makes a choking noise in the background, and Arsenal shifts his weight uncomfortably on his feet.

“Firewall, next time you have a chance, we could use some upgrades on our computers. If the offer’s still good,” he says.

“It is. See you soon,” I say, waving cheerfully as the trio leaves.

Oliver holds out my S.I. suit, and I take it with a pout, reluctantly pulling off his sweater and changing.

“Tonight,” he murmurs, soft enough so Caitlin can’t hear as she packs up her equipment. “We can just talk, and have some downtime. I promise.”

I smirk at him, mischievously. “I hope it won’t be _just_ talking.”

Caitlin coughs again, and Oliver steps away from me like he’s trying to control himself. “Wow, uh, still here,” she says, awkwardly.

“Yes, we are,” I sigh. “Ready to go?”

Oliver lurks again behind us as we walk, and Caitlin keeps giving me curious sideways looks.

“Just ask,” I prompt her.

“You two really _are_ a thing, huh?”

“I don’t know what we are,” I answer, truthfully.

“I didn’t understand until I saw it. I thought it might have just been one-sided, or some heat-of-the-moment, apocalypse thing. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

I roll my eyes at her, and she smiles.

“I’m happy for you,” she finishes, simply. “That’s all.”

When we get back to the compound, she thanks Oliver and tactfully ducks inside first, giving us a moment of privacy. I pull off my helmet and he slides one hand into my hair and the other around my back, holding me close for a lingering moment before giving me a far-too-brief kiss. I make an involuntary sound of disappointment as he pulls back, his forehead still touching mine, our noses still pressed together.

“See you tonight,” he says, his eyes glinting.

“Tonight,” I echo, stealing one last kiss before letting go.

It takes me a long time to fall asleep, and when I do, my dreams are filled with thoughts of him.

<\-----<<

“What’s up with you, Smoak?”

I’m jolted out of my reverie by Cisco’s words and turn to meet his knowing smile. “Oh, just in a good mood,” I say, which is true. I’ve been gliding through my day, excited about the progress we’ve made with fighting the virus and the thought of getting to spend some quality time with Oliver later. TechSent is supposed to be guiding Harbinger’s team through a raid of a car yard, but Cisco has patiently been enduring the brunt of the work on his own.

“You and Caitlin are both keeping something from me.” He gives me a suspicious glare, and I bite my lip.

“We’ll tell you when we can,” I offer, honestly. I don’t want anyone to overhear us, and it’s hard to find a time when the three of us are all free to talk.

Cisco seems to accept this answer, then he goes back on comms to direct S.I. while I lean back in my chair with a sigh.

When lights out comes around, I slip out as usual, running my fingers through my sort-of bed hair as I go. As I round the corner, I almost collide with a tall figure in a black pants suit.

“Shit, sorry,” I say, hurriedly cycling through my mind for a good excuse. The person turns around, and my heart drops like a stone.

“Miss Smoak,” Amanda Waller says coldly. “Going somewhere?”

“Just back to the dorms,” I improvise. “I fell asleep in the games room.”

“Come with me,” she orders, in a tone she might consider inviting. “I think it’s time we had a chat.”

I don’t know how much time passes while I wait in Waller’s office, growing more and more agitated. I know it would be suicide to try to leave, but she seems to be leaving me to stew.

Finally, she returns with a laptop in hand and an icy expression, even as I force a smile when she sits across from me.

“You’ve always been a model employee, Miss Smoak. You’ve been more essential in the identification and control of threats than any other member of my organization. I’ve never had any reason to doubt your loyalty, at least until now.”

“Because I was out of bed?” I laugh, nervously.

“Because I’ve taken an interest in making sure that any weaknesses within A.R.G.U.S. are eradicated.”

“I’m not a weakness.”

“As I once thought, too. Imagine my surprise when we looked back through some archive footage and found a few _questionable_ incidences.”

I feel my cheeks flush, even as I know I have to remain impassive. They haven’t sanitized me yet, so they might not have enough evidence to be sure, and I know I was never careless with the cameras around the compound.

Waller presses something on her laptop, and the video begins to play. It’s the library, from the night Tommy and Laurel were broken out, and my heart sinks further as I see myself speaking to the former.

“What exactly did you say to Thomas Merlyn here?” she asks, pointing to the moment the sirens went off and Tommy heads for Laurel.

“I don’t remember,” I lie. “Probably that I had to go straight to TechSent.”

“Interesting. So you headed straight for your desk, right? And you never mentioned this,” she continues, clicking a button and smiling like a satisfied cat when the camera clearly shows me standing in the hallway with the Arrow before he fires the smoke pellet, “to any of your superiors?”

I shrug. “I didn’t want to chase him. He didn’t hurt me, and I had a job to do.”

“Your determination to deceive me is admirable, Miss Smoak, but you will not be successful. You see, earlier this evening, Helena Bertinelli came to me and informed me that you have been leaving your dorm after lights out and returning at dawn. I had to see for myself if it was true, and here you are. Mysteriously, there’s no trace of you on the cameras anywhere in the compound during the nights Miss Bertinelli alleges you go missing. So, where are you going?”

“I have trouble sleeping,” I try.

“It is not in your interest to maintain your innocence,” she snarls. “The only reason you’re still here is because you are valuable to me. Tell me what you know, and this whole process will be made simpler.”

“I don’t know anything!” Panic rises in my throat, threatening to overwhelm me with tears, but I hold them back. This is Oliver’s worst fear made real – my cover blown, inside the walls where he can’t save me. My heart aches at the thought of never seeing him again, of him waiting in the lair for me to come _home_ , because _he_ is my home in this wretched wasteland.

“Ramon and Snow,” she snaps, and I look up at her in terror. “If you don’t confess, I will bring them in here, and I will _make_ you.”

Tears spill over in heartbroken relief. She doesn’t know of their involvement, and I’m not dragging them down with me. “No! Okay, okay, I’ve met with the archer,” I gasp. Waller looks triumphant, leaning in close to study my face.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know who he was before the outbreak,” I say, and my evasive answer seems to work. “I was just the tech support.”

“What does he want with Thomas Merlyn and Laurel Lance?”

“He wanted to hurt Malcolm. I haven’t seen them.” _Recently_ , I complete the thought in my head.

“What does he want?” Waller’s voice is progressively rising with fury, as I fail to give her the answers she wants.

“He wants to bring down the Atom and stop the virus. He’s trying to do the right thing!”

She looks like she is about to argue with me, but then the ground shakes suddenly and we both freeze.

The door bangs open, and one of the guards comes in. “Something’s wrong. I know you said not to interrupt…”

With a burst of bravery I never would have had before Oliver, I seize the opportunity and rush through the door. The guard is so surprised that he doesn’t stop me, and the others in the hallway look up in confusion.

“Stop her! Take her _alive_!” Waller shrieks, and I run faster than I ever thought possible, my legs burning with the effort.

Lockdown protocol kicks in, and a door ahead of me seals shut, so I make a quick detour past the science department, soldiers hot on my heels. Something like a bullet whizzes past my shoulder; I instinctively duck my head and run impossibly faster.

“ _Felicity!_ ” a voice roars as I round the corner into the imprisonment sector, and I could scream with relief as I spot my leather-clad saviour. There are two people with him, one slight figure in a red hoodie who immediately runs past me and begins wrestling a guard, and one tiny brunette who takes out two with an impressive aerial kick.

I’ve almost reached Oliver when a stabbing pain hits me in the back of my shoulder, and I cry out and stumble. He lunges forward to catch me, shooting an arrow behind my back into the soldier without a second’s hesitation.

“Time to go,” he growls, and I try to run as he pulls me along, my breathing becoming more and more ragged. The doorway that was Gate F is now completely decimated, hanging off the hinges, flames still burning around our feet.

All of the guards lie unconscious on the floor. Our two new allies race to join us at the exit, and I dizzily rush for the broken vent to grab STELLA.

“Felicity!” a new voice calls, and I glance up to see Diggle silhouetted in the flashing emergency lighting. The one in the red hoodie steps forward with his fists raised.

“No! He’s a friend,” I cry, my lips feeling numb. “Digg, you could come with us.”

He shakes his head, sadly. “My wife is still here. I won’t leave without her.”

Some part of my brain wonders how I’ve missed the wedding band on his finger all this time, but Oliver tugs me back.

“We have to go. They got you.”

I twist around, remembering the bullet hitting my back – but it’s not a bullet at all, it’s a tranq dart sticking out through my clothing, and I pluck it out with a wince.

“That explains why I feel all floaty,” I remark.

“More guards are on their way,” Diggle warns, tapping his earpiece and turning to leave before he’s discovered. I run with Oliver to the opening, then trip and almost fall. He sweeps me up into his arms and runs as if I weigh nothing, and I remember to hold onto him, even though the edges of my vision are going fuzzy.

There are three motorbikes waiting in our spot, and our two companions take one each and speed off in different directions. Oliver sits me on the bike in front of him, facing him with my legs around his hips in a way that I’m sure would embarrass me if I were more lucid.

“Hold on,” he says, even as he supports me with one arm and uses the other to drive the bike.

“You came for me!” I exclaim, as if I’ve only just realized it, and he laughs a little like he finds my wording funny.

“Always.”

The roar of the engine in my ears, the feel of leather beneath my cheek, the smell of his skin where my nose presses against his neck – it’s a heady combination that will no doubt creep into my dreams. The movement as we travel is comforting, rocking, as I begin to succumb to the darkness.

“I love you,” I murmur.

And everything fades away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some keen eyes among you (most of you, actually) smelled a rat... and you were right. It couldn't last! Things are finally in motion and it's all gathering speed from here.
> 
> I am going to start stretching out the length between chapters a bit, to give myself time to finish the piece. I worked 43 hours last week, not counting the hour-long commute each way, so I haven't had any time to wrap up this thing. Rest assured, I have at least one fluffy AU oneshot in the pipeline to help tide you over.
> 
> The lovely thatmasquedgirl deserves ALL the puppies and cookies and good hair days. All you beautiful people out there reading this crazy thing deserve your favourite meal for dinner and a full night's sleep in a bed with crisp, clean sheets. Thank you so much.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m glad things happened like they did, even if it was in the wake of an apocalypse."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: this is the chapter that earned the violence archive warning/M rating for gore. It's fairly minimal, but enough that my beta and I decided to put those warnings in place, just to be sure.

Awakening is gentle, slow, and warm. The soft hum of noise melts into syllables, but they mean nothing as I press my face more forcefully into something soft, determined to get away from the brightness that threatens my peaceful state.

A hand touches my cheek, and lips brush over my forehead. I mumble contentedly, hoping I can stay in this dream for a while longer.

“Felicity.”

I groan something that might have been a _don’t wanna_ , if I could get my mouth to form words.

“Come back to me, Felicity.”

Reluctantly, I open my eyelids just a fraction, turning my head sideways to squint at the blurry figure leaning over me.

“So tired,” I manage.

“Welcome back.” All I can see is a pair of glittering blue eyes, relief and anger swirling like tropical storms within them.

I drop my head back into the pillow with a huff and he laughs, and I become aware of his warm hand rubbing circles on my back.

“Keep doing that,” I mumble. “More sleep.”

“You’ve been out eighteen hours already,” Oliver complains.

That gets my attention, and I lift my head again. “What?”

“Do you remember what happened last night?”

“This morning, if we’re being specific,” another voice chimes in, and the rest of the foundry slides into focus as I spot Thea leaning on the salmon ladder with her arms folded.

I frown, but my memories are too hazy to discern anything specific. “No?”

Oliver sighs. “All I know is that you were late. I had a bad feeling, and Thea and Roy were here, so–”

“Wait, who?” I ask, fully awake now, pulling myself up to a sitting position. I spot Arsenal – Roy? – spinning in the chair by my computers, and it’s only then that I realise Oliver’s hood is off and his sister is _right there_.

“I must have missed a lot,” I remark, rubbing my eyes, and then I scowl and point a warning finger at Roy. “But if you touched my computers while I was out, buddy, you’re dead meat.”

He lifts his hands in a gesture of innocence. “No thanks; I like having my eyeballs securely inside their sockets.”

“Yeah, so, turns out my idiot brother isn’t actually dead,” Thea says dryly. “You’re lucky you were lying there, drooling away. You missed the teary reunion.”

I wipe self-consciously at my mouth, and Thea smirks with amusement.

“I was lucky they came over last night to talk strategy. When you didn’t show up, I got worried that something bad had happened,” Oliver explains.

“We decided to bust you out,” Roy continues. “And once we got in there, we were just about to split up when you came flying down the corridor with a dozen guards on your tail.”

“They got you with a dart,” Thea says, which explains the monster of a headache and the soreness in my back. “The dose was much stronger than we expected, though.”

“I guess my cover was blown, then,” I say with a sigh. Nothing they’ve said has triggered anything but fuzzy images in my mind. Shakily, with Oliver hovering anxiously by my side, I stand up and walk over to my computers. Roy moves out of my seat like lightning and I sit, my fingers flying across the keyboard with only a _touch_ less speed than usual.

“What are you doing?” Thea asks, sounding concerned for my sanity.

“A few days ago, I set up a shell program inside A.R.G.U.S. software that only my friend Cisco can access. I should be able to communicate with him from here without detection.”

Roy whistles, impressed, and Oliver squeezes my shoulder in silent pride.

“There, I’m in,” I say, to nobody in particular, as I activate the program and send a coded alert to Cisco’s monitor. “I _designed_ this software. If anyone at A.R.G.U.S. had half a brain, they would have pulled all of their systems offline.”

Letters flash up on my screen, and I immediately start deciphering and scribbling down on some scrap paper.

“That’s just gibberish,” Roy observes, with a frown.

“No, it’s not. It’s a code, see?” I hold up my paper to reveal the message: _F? Safe. No questions. Waller angry. Raids planned, warehouse district. OK? C._

“Good news?” Oliver asks.

“Best we could hope for. They don’t suspect Caitlin or Cisco of helping me, and they’re looking for us in the wrong places.” I type a brief reply and send it back.

“You have a code memorised?” Roy asks, clearly still disbelieving.

“Not exactly. The encryption randomises the cipher every time, which makes it harder to hack. You have to look for the patterns in the grid,” I explain, pointing as Cisco’s next message pops up, but Roy just stares blankly. “Here. _‘Stay safe. Laying low. Tell vigilante hi. C.’”_

“I’ll leave you to the code-breaking,” he says, uncomfortably.

“Felicity is going to need supplies,” Oliver says, and Thea nods with confidence.

“We’ve got you covered,” the younger girl promises. “Swing by whenever.”

It occurs to me that I am never going back into the compound. It’s a blessing that of my limited, A.R.G.U.S. issue possessions, none will be missed. The only belonging I consider precious is the sweater I was wearing when I left, and I’d stolen it from a certain vigilante, anyway. I glance around for it, and Oliver passes it to me, his lip twitching up at the right corner.

“I applied a salve to your back while you were out. It should reduce the swelling from the dart,” he explains.

“You say that like I’d be mad at you for undressing me,” I say without thinking, and Thea lurches to her feet.

“Can you guys... just... _not_ do that?” she says with a grimace.

“Sorry,” I mumble, my cheeks flaming. Oliver ignores the exchange and looks at me apologetically.

“I was hoping to take Thea to see Tommy and Laurel, if you’d be okay staying here awhile.”

I smile at him and nod, glancing out of the corner at my eye at his makeshift bed.

“Yes, you can sleep longer, if you want,” he sighs, and I punch the air in triumph.

Roy gestures at the pile of blankets. “You’re going to have to get another one of those.”

“We can share,” Oliver answers lightly.

Thea groans and punches him in the shoulder. “We’re _going_.” She leads the way up and out of the room, Roy trailing along behind her.

Oliver drops a kiss on my forehead. “Seeing as last night didn’t go as planned, I hope your schedule tonight is clear?”

“For you?” I make a show out of pausing, tapping a finger on my chin. “I guess I could move my other appointments around.”

He rolls his eyes at me before leaving, calling back over his shoulder as he reaches the door. “Sleep well, Felicity.”

“Be careful!” I reply, already on my way to climbing back into the warm embrace of bed.

Sleep comes easily, despite the scavenged frame, lumpy pillows, and mismatched blankets.

Not because of the after-effects of the drug lingering in my system, but because I feel like I’m finally home.

<\-----<<

Disappointingly, Oliver only wants to talk when he arrives back at the foundry, although it _is_ while we sit together on the bed, our legs intertwined in front of us as I lean back into his arms. He seems to be fascinated with my hair, constantly pulling back loose strands and tucking them behind my ear as I chatter away about my former life inside the compound.

“So then this guy, who barely even graduated _high school_ , tries to tell me that I’m leaving our systems vulnerable to attack. He doubted _me_ , of all people! Keep in mind, TechSent had been established _three months before this_ , which equals years in hacker time. If there was a way into the system, somebody would have found it already.”

“You found a way in,” he points out, running the fingers of his left hand over my arm and making it difficult for me to maintain my train of thought.

“Yes, but nobody else knows that software like I do. Well, maybe Cisco,” I add, reconsidering.

“Sara once tried to break through A.R.G.U.S. firewalls, early on in our crusade,” he says, speaking in a softer tone that betrays a hint of sadness. “She was unsuccessful, so we looked into it.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, cringing. “I thought I was fighting for the good guys back then.”

“When your name came up, all I could think about was a girl who fixed my laptop.”

I groan in embarrassment. “You _remember_ that?”

“You were stuck in my mind for weeks. I almost walked back into that store so many times; I thought of the worst excuses. In the end, I decided that I was too selfish and you were too good to be tarnished by my reputation.” I can hear the bitterness lacing his words. I’ve known for a long time how much his actions in the present are fuelled by the regret he feels over his life before the virus, but it’s not often I get the chance to correct that, so I twist around to look at him.

“That’s not true,” I say firmly. “I was complacent, stuck in the same rut going nowhere fast. I had a degree from MIT and I was working in a _Buy-More_ , of all places. We’ve both grown a lot as people since that moment, but I’d like to think we might’ve made it work in that other life.”

He smiles at me, and then pulls me back to settle against him again, allowing my head to fall in the curve of his neck. “I’m glad things happened like they did, even if it was in the wake of an apocalypse. I knew it had to be you when someone started sniffing around my old tech. Then you walked into that alley.”

“Mysteries need to be solved,” I tell him. “I decided I didn’t want to keep obeying A.R.G.U.S. like some mindless drone. There were things they weren’t telling us, and you seemed to be the only one fighting for something different. It was an easy choice, even if it was scary walking out of the gate that first night.”

We drift into companionable silence for a while, lost in our thoughts. Despite all the sleep I’ve had in the past twenty-four hours, I still feel my eyelids sliding shut at the sense of comfort and belonging in his arms.

“We should go get you some clothes and things from Thea’s base,” he says, nudging me.

“I could just wear _your_ clothes,” I grumble, refusing to open my eyes.

He laughs before preparing to slide out from underneath me in spite of my protests. “As much as I would like that, you might get uncomfortable after a while. And I don’t want you to steal all my sweaters.”

“I could never be uncomfortable in this perfect, soft, wonderful creation of the fabric gods,” I declare.

“Come on; the sooner we go, the sooner we get back. They probably have some non-perishables too, and our stock is getting low. Unless you particularly like eating baked beans…”

Begrudgingly, I start to lace up my boots. “I guess I have been promising to upgrade their computers. I can probably install some communication software tonight without too much trouble.”

“Good,” he answers, picking up his mask.

“Wait!” I snatch it out of his hands with a smile, carefully securing it to his face, my tongue between my teeth. “There.”

“How do I look?” he asks, tilting his head at me in amusement.

I toss him an approving wink. “Like a hero.”

<\-----<<

Something in the world has changed, now. It’s unidentifiable, but it’s there, in the absence of the sinister shadow of death that once followed me in every step I took outside the compound. The bodies seem fewer, the cold wind less harsh, and there’s hope in my heart that the end of this nightmare is just around the corner.

Even my new backpack, stuffed to bursting with clothes, food, and basic toiletries, can’t weigh me down. Thea and Roy’s group, though an odd assortment of personalities, were extremely generous after I set up an easy-to-use threat detection system for them, in addition to allowing them access to the majority of our cam network.

Oliver watches me with a secretive smile, and I tilt my head at him curiously. “What?”

“You seem optimistic.”

“I have reason to be. Don’t you feel it?” I grasp his wrist and take a little skipping step, almost tripping over my new, chunky boots. “Oops.”

He remains silent, but when I let go of him, he quickly slips his hand back to mine and folds our fingers together.

We continue to walk, side by side, and my mind starts to paint a picture of what this city will look like once it’s rebuilt - a glassy black sky, littered with stars over a sleepy suburb with families having dinner together and couples having movie nights and me coding at my desk while Oliver tries to pull me away. A normal city, thriving as it should be, lights blinking in windows and smoke pouring from chimneys.

“You know your sister and Roy are sleeping together, right?” I ask, smirking when his head whips around to stare at me in confusion. “Thought so. Perceptive, genius vigilante, always one step ahead of the enemy, but no idea about the personal life of his baby sister.”

“I’ll kill him,” he growls, and I laugh.

“She’d kill _you_.” When the stony expression on his face doesn’t change, I sigh and squeeze his hand. “Look, she’s managed to find someone who makes her happy, even in the darkest of times. He cares for her and protects her. Does that sound at all familiar to you?”

Oliver doesn’t answer, instead freezing in place and holding out his arm to stop me. “Did you hear that?”

“No…” I answer with a frown.

He takes a few hesitant steps forward, his bow at the ready, peering down a dark alleyway.

“Might have just been a cat or something?” I suggest in a low voice.

There’s a few seconds where I hold my breath, and then his body language relaxes. “Yeah,” he agrees on an exhale, and he turns back to me.

A crash sounds from the building right behind me, and his face goes ashen. He lifts his bow and I duck instinctively as he fires, the thud of Corrupted hitting the ground resonating through my body.

“Run!” he orders urgently, and I obey without looking back. There are snarls and footsteps in my wake, and I spy a few figures lurching and stumbling awkwardly towards the road from our right.

“Where did they all come from?” I gasp as I run beside him.

He doesn’t answer, firing instead at a particularly swift Corrupted who falls with a groan.

Just as I think we’re reaching cover, three more appear to block our path. Oliver curses and shoots a different kind of arrow behind us that results in a small explosion, but it barely even slows the progress of our pursuers.

“I’m almost out,” he says in a strained voice to me. I pull out my taser and manage to take out a teenage girl.

We’re surrounded on all sides, and Oliver is almost out of weapons. There are half a dozen Corrupted left standing, and he fires another explosive arrow to thin the ranks a little more.

A Corrupted, big, male, maybe mid-forties, lunges at me. I try to reload my taser, but it takes just a second too long.

I’ve barely let out a scream when Oliver spins and releases his final arrow, which hits straight and true, right in my attacker’s eye. The wind is knocked out of me as we collide, falling together, almost in slow motion. I hear Oliver’s cry of fury and the _thwack_ of bow hitting flesh, and only then is there silence.

“Felicity?” he calls, his voice quivering. I can only cough, and he pulls the body off me. My face feels wet, and I’m not sure if it’s from tears or the blood that gushed from the wound in the Corrupted’s eye socket.

I blink to clear my vision, looking up to see Oliver kneeling beside me. He’s pulled his hood back, and I can see the anguish in his expression.

“Did you get bitten?” he asks, looking as if he’s going to be sick.

I sit up slowly, wincing with the effort. A quick check of my limbs reveal no bite marks, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Oliver twitches uncomfortably, clearly restraining himself from reaching out to help me up, as much as he longs to.

He should leave, but I know he won’t, even as his eyes glitter with frustrated tears.

“This wasn’t your fault,” I wheeze. “There’s no way we could have known there would be so many of them here.”

“I ran out of arrows,” he spits with disgust. “I _ran out_ and I was defenseless. It should have been me.”

In taut silence, we head for home, at a slow, limping pace because that’s all I can manage. I feel numb, unable to think, even as I know I should be planning my own quarantine, figuring out how I can isolate myself long enough for the virus to die. Bitterly, I lament the fact that even mere days from now, we could know more about the nanobots, and there wouldn’t be a cloud of uncertainty hanging over my head.

“I might not even be infected,” I tell him, but my tone rings hollow.

I take off my shoes outside the door and try my best not to touch anything as we walk inside, knowing I could contaminate any surface. Wordlessly, Oliver goes to the case that I only recently learned holds his suit, and pulls the stand out of it, tossing it haphazardly on the floor with a clatter. I clamber inside, and it’s just barely wide enough for me to stand comfortably. He half-closes the door as I sit down, crossing my legs with a sigh.

“Going to be a here a while, hey?” I remark, injecting false cheerfulness into my voice.

He brings me some warm water and disinfectant, then busies himself drilling air holes in the top of my makeshift cage and covering them with fabric from a surgical mask while I try to clean myself up.

Once I’m wearing fresh clothing - miraculously still clean in the pack we’d carried - he closes the door and locks it.

“I feel like a fish in a tank,” I joke, pressing my palm flat against the glass and willing him to look at me. He does, and I feel a pang of sadness at the conflict in his eyes. After a moment, he presses his own palm to mine, merely half an inch separating us.

“You told me you loved me, you know,” he says, his voice cracking. “You were drugged at the time.”

An hour ago, I would have felt embarrassed, but this wasteland has a way of changing everything in a heartbeat. I give him a sad smile. “Doesn’t mean I meant it any less.” He opens his mouth, but I shake my head. “Not yet, okay? Wait until I…” I trail off, looking for the right words.

“Wake up?” he suggests, without humour.

“When I wake up,” I confirm, and I lean my head against the glass, closing my eyes against the threatening onslaught of tears.

Now, we wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words cannot express how sorry I am! I disappeared for way longer than I'd planned, and I still haven't had time to write another word of this story (I wanted to have finished chapter 13 before I posted this, but it's still only half done). I didn't want to keep you all waiting any longer, so here we are. Hopefully the stars will align and I'll be able to finish this thing sometime really soon.
> 
> As usual, thanks to thatmasquedgirl for whipping this entire thing into shape, and to you guys for sticking with me. I appreciate every comment and kudos more than you know.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, go get the son of a bitch, okay?”

The fever is the first thing to set in.

Sweat beads on my forehead as I watch Oliver wear a rut in the floor with his pacing. Every twenty or so steps he looks up at me, the fear of seeing and the desire to know warring in his expression.

“Oliver?” I say to break the silence, my voice shaking slightly.

He glances up and his face changes. “Shit.”

“What? What is it?” I touch my hand to my lips and it comes away bloody.

“Your nose,” he confirms. “I’ll get you some towels.”

“No!” I protest, and he gives me a disbelieving stare. “I’m symptomatic. I could go full Corrupted any minute. Don’t open the door for anything.”

He growls something under his breath, which might be _I hate this_ , but it’s muffled by the glass between us.

The aching is slow to appear, but it’s there. Oliver grows even more agitated at the knowledge that I’m in pain, which means I try to stave off the discomfort when my breathing starts to get ragged, my windpipe feeling like it burns with every breath.

“You should be trying to track the Atom’s movements,” I tell him tightly, speaking through my teeth. “At least while I’m not snarling, rabid, and trying to hammer through the glass.”

Oliver gives me a dark look that tells me he’s not impressed by my gallows humor.

Sitting upright becomes too agonizing, so I slowly lower myself onto my side, curling my knees to my chest. Oliver sits with his back to me for a while, his shoulders shaking ever so slightly, and part of me _wishes_ for the virus to take over my mind so I don’t have to watch him fall apart.

I don’t know how much time passes as I lie there, paralyzed by my spasming muscles, but suddenly my vision slides into focus and I see Oliver staring down at me from just on the other side of the glass.

“You’re sick,” he observes.

“I know.”

“But you’re not… _sick_.”

I may not have had much experience with any Corrupted in the early stages, but I know enough to realize that I should have been foaming at the mouth several hours ago. “I know.”

“Why?”

“ _That_ , I don’t know.” I sigh, sitting up tentatively and wrinkling my nose at the new bloodstains all over my clothing. “Everything hurts, and I miss Caitlin.”

Carefully he slides a bottle of water and a ready-to-eat meal inside my prison before closing the door again. The food is like sawdust in my mouth, but the water soothes my throat and makes it a little less painful to breathe. I gulp it all down and my mind starts working.

“I’m probably still contagious,” I remark. “The virus could have evolved somehow, taking a longer period of time to come into full effect. But if the virus is no different…”

“Then _you_ are different,” Oliver finishes. “You could have some sort of immunity that lessens the severity of the infection.”

“I don’t think there’s anything that special about me.”

He gives me a meaningful look and I roll my eyes.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he offers, reaching for some clean towels and warm water.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I protest, backing away from the entrance to my makeshift prison as he opens the door and sets the supplies down. “I don’t want to make you sick.”

He waves a pair of latex gloves and a surgical mask at me. “You’re our best hope of stopping the Atom right now.”

I hesitate, looking longingly at my computers and thinking of all the potential messages from Cisco I could have missed. “Do you promise to tranquilize me if I so much as _twitch_ in a weird way?”

“Yes, but I doubt it will come to that.”

I clamber out cautiously as he opens the door and steps back. The concern is evident on his face as I wince, my body still aching with every movement, but he doesn’t look afraid of me. I clean myself as well as I can, then Oliver kneels in front of me despite my protests. He carefully snaps on a pair of gloves, then takes a warm washcloth to my face, gently wiping away the grime.

Once I have my own mask and gloves on, he gestures to my computer station.

“Work your magic,” he tells me.

The pain melts away as instinct takes over. I swiftly set up a few background searches on immunities to various diseases while restarting my other programs with wider parameters, hoping I’ll luck out and find something. A notification pops up, alerting me to two messages from Cisco.

Absentmindedly chewing my lip, I decipher the first. _Possible DNA sample - Atom. Caitlin intercepted._

“Oliver!” I gasp, and he appears behind me in a flash. His hand moves to rest on my shoulder out of habit and I flinch away before he can make contact.

“Sorry,” he says, grimacing.

The second message is longer, but my heart starts to pound as I scratch out the letters in front of me. “‘ _Partial match in A.R.G.U.S. system. Arms dealer Leo Mueller - dec. Familial?’_ Leo Mueller? Why is that name so familiar?” I ask, already scouring every database I have access to.

“Says here he had no children or siblings,” Oliver points out.

“Look, there’s no father listed on the birth certificate,” I say, barely able to keep up as my fingers fly across the keyboard. “But… yep, his mother’s bank account was receiving some pretty hefty payments from a shell corporation until she died. I can backtrace it.”

“Mueller was one of the first known cases of the virus,” he interrupts, pointing at a news article as it comes up on my screen. “That’s no coincidence.”

“They never did find a Patient Zero,” I remark, just as my algorithm spits out a name. “The payments came from... Sydney Palmer, Senior.”

A wave of realization hits me, and I spin in my chair to stare at Oliver in disbelief.

“What?” he asks, urgently.

“Palmer,” I reply, struggling to put my whirlwind of thoughts into words. “Ray Palmer.”

“Who is Ray Palmer?”

“I found this paper that a student at MIT wrote about the merits of microscopic technology ten years ago. It was widely criticized and the science wasn’t sound, so it was withdrawn from online publication. The author - a robotics major named Ray Palmer - apparently died a few months after the outbreak, but I always thought there might have been a connection. And if Ray Palmer’s father was also Leo Mueller’s biological father…”

“Then that would mean Ray is a familial match to Mueller,” Oliver finishes, already picking up his bow and pulling off his surgical mask. “Where am I going?”

I rattle off his last known address, and the vigilante tilts his head at me in question.

“Are you going to be okay?”

I nod confidently. “I can deadlock the system once you’re gone, so if I go all… _grr_ ,” I say, miming claws with my fingers, “I won’t be able to get out. I’m pretty sure Corrupted can’t hack,” I quip.

The corner of his mouth lifts slightly. “Even one as brilliant as you?”

I roll my eyes at him. “I want to kiss you, but we’ll have to take a raincheck on that,” I say, blushing. “So, go get the son of a bitch, okay?”

With one last piercing look, as if committing my face to memory, he disappears through the doorway.

<\-----<<

A search of Palmer’s apartment reveals nothing, so I send Oliver on to the former offices of Palmer Tech, in a part of the city swarming with Corrupted.

The rhythmic sounds of Oliver’s breaths as he aims and fires his arrows fade into the background, my mind still whirring as I comb through the details of Ray Palmer’s life. His brother, Sydney Junior, had passed from leukemia at the age of seven, and his parents both went missing after the outbreak, presumed dead.

I find evidence of a girlfriend, Anna Loring, on his social media accounts. After a search, I find out that she was buried at St. Sebastian, a small church in the Glades.

Pausing to listen to the sounds of Oliver fighting, I wrinkle my nose at a particularly gruesome cracking noise, undoubtedly steel-toed boot connecting with bone. If I distract him with what could turn out to be nothing, I could put him in danger of infection. St. Sebastian is barely two minutes’ walk from Verdant, so I’ll probably be back before he even gets inside Palmer Tech.

Grabbing my tablet and Oliver’s grey sweater, I easily override my deadlock and slip out into the night. The bite of the cool air is invigorating, and I walk faster, in spite of the lingering pain from before.

“Felicity?” Despite his whispered tone, his voice is clear through my comm. “Nothing at Palmer Tech. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” I reply quietly, peering into the very empty graveyard behind the chapel. “I thought I had a lead, but it’s a dead end. I’ll see you when you get home.”

Clicking off my mic, I let out a sigh and step back.

“A _dead end_ is exactly what you found.”

The voice sends chills through me, but I force myself to turn, holding my chin high in defiance.

“Apparently you didn’t meet yours after all,” I remark.

“Take your comm out and throw it away from you. Don’t even try to switch it on.” The Atom casts an intimidating presence, even from twenty feet away. His exosuit is slightly battle-worn, scratched and dented, fitting against the backdrop of the desolate landscape.

“Ray Palmer.” I brandish his name at him like a weapon, and he cocks his head sideways before slowly removing his helmet and moving cautiously closer.

“Very good. I’m all out of stickers, though.”

From here, I can see his dark eyes are swimming with twisted anger, the lines around his mouth engraved by hatred. I wonder how an ordinary man could have been moulded into this, a killer with almost as little humanity as the monsters he’d created.

“Then you can give me answers. Why am I not sick?” I demand, and Palmer shrugs disinterestedly.

“My best guess? The same reason _I_ don’t get sick. You must have come into contact with my prototype strain several years back.”

I frown, shaking my head. “I’ve never had the virus.”

“It wasn’t successful the first time. I infected a water cooler at MIT a few years after I graduated, but as far as I know, the worst thing that happened to any of the subjects was a splitting headache. I would hypothesize that anyone exposed to that strain built up a mild tolerance to the nanobots, thus it’s easier for your system to fight it off.” His expression darkens, slightly. “When my fiancée contracted the virus, I should have been infected, too. I got sick, but I watched her spiral out of control, and I remember every moment of it. I didn’t understand it at the time.”

“You disgust me,” I sneer.

He takes a menacing few steps forward. “Your archer friend isn’t here to save you, Miss Smoak,” he warns. My face must show my shock, because his slowly splits into a dangerous grin. “That’s right. I have sources on the inside too.”

Something whirrs to life in his suit, and he lifts his arm as if to aim at me.

Having slipped my tablet from my bag while he was talking, I seize my chance. Without hesitation, I stab my finger onto the screen. There’s a pause, a brief static noise, and his suit powers down with a plaintive _bleep_.

“You’re not the only one who knows their viruses,” I quip. “I just had to get within range of your processor to upload it.”

Palmer lets out a roar of fury and lunges at me, but his suit hinders his movement, an advanced mechanism reduced to a wearable paperweight. I slip out of his reach and launch myself over the cemetery fence, ducking and weaving through gravestones as my pursuer hurls insults at my back. Even with the added bulk, he’s gaining on me, and as I reach the other end of the courtyard, he grasps my shoulder and flings me onto the ground. My head connects with stone, and my vision starts to swim.

I don’t know how long it takes to gather my bearings, but when I blink a couple of times and look up, I see a figure in dark green leather unleashing a flurry of blows on the partially deconstructed robot-man. With one last jumping kick, right to the breastplate of the suit, Oliver brings Palmer down.

“There are some things you should never, ever do, Palmer,” Oliver says, deathly calm. “Hurting her is one of them.”

He helps me to my feet, carefully restrained fury and concern at war behind his eyes.

“You don’t understand,” Palmer spits, blood trickling from his lower lip. “My technology could alter the path of modern medicine. Catastrophic brain trauma repaired, microscopic cancer cells destroyed, anything from heart attacks to strokes to even blindness - the possibilities are endless. Terminally ill or disabled patients cured with something as non-invasive as an injection, no anesthesia or long recovery periods necessary. They would name hospital wings, research grants, and schools in my honor. I held the key to changing the world, and they laughed in my face.”

“So you decided to kill millions of people?”

“It wasn’t supposed to go this far. All I wanted was to demonstrate that the nanobots worked, infecting a few dozen subjects for a presentation; my bastard half-brother and all the executives who scorned my genius, bowing to my will because of something they didn’t believe existed. I didn’t know how the bots would attack the central nervous system. I didn’t know they would be so infectious, or that once they replicated, I’d no longer have any control.”

I almost begin to feel sorry for him, but Oliver bristles furiously by my side.

“How was the solution to market your product to terrorists?” he snarls.

“The most clichéd villain origin story in the book,” Palmer answers bitterly. “I lost someone I loved. My fiancée was Corrupted, and I tried so hard to protect her until I could find a cure. Then the military raided my building looking for survivors, and shot her on sight. After that, nothing mattered anymore.”

“You killed her,” I tell him. “You have nobody to blame but yourself.”

Oliver draws back his bow and Palmer’s face turns white with desperation. “You have to believe me. I tried to stop it! I tried to shut it down. It was too late. Anna was dead and I had lost everything. My whole career, people have overlooked me, and criticised my ideas. I just wanted to be _respected_ as an inventor. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

The Arrow’s concentration does not falter, even as his target crawls to his knees to beg. I have never seen Oliver kill before, and the coldness in his eyes sends a shiver through me.

“ _Please_ , I couldn’t stop it; I tried…” Palmer pleads.

“Death would be too good for you,” Oliver finally says with disgust. “I’ll take you to A.R.G.U.S. myself. They can do what they like with you.”

He forces Palmer to remove the remaining pieces of his Atom suit, then ties his wrists behind his back. I use my tablet to sweep Palmer for any trackers or devices, but he’s clean, so I pick through the tech, studying the processor and weapon systems with interest.

“Do you have a knife?” I ask, and Oliver hands me one with an amused huff. I use the blade to prise the important parts from the metal, tucking them into my bag. “The whole suit would be too heavy to carry, and I don’t want to leave this kind of thing lying around for A.R.G.U.S. scouts to find.”

Oliver nods approvingly. “How’s your head?”

I run my fingers over the back of my skull and wince. “Sore, but I’m okay. I hit my right shoulder pretty hard, too.”

He checks quickly for signs of bleeding, before reaching to cup my face in his hands. I gasp and step back, shaking my head.

“Infected, remember?”

“Right… maybe a slight concussion,” he concludes after a moment.

I wrinkle my nose and gesture to our prisoner. “What are we going to do with him?”

“We have a few suggestions,” a new voice declares. “Most of them end with him as worm food.”

Bow in hand, glaring down at the silent Palmer, Thea looks every bit the fighter her brother is.

“Laurel contacted us,” Roy explains. “The Atom showed up on the feed she was monitoring in this area, and she was worried he was getting too close to your base. She tried to reach you, but nobody answered, so we came to check it out.”

“I’ve got it under control,” Oliver says tightly, but Thea shoots him a knowing look.

“You can’t give him to A.R.G.U.S. until we’ve deposed Waller.”

“We?” he echoes, faintly.

“There’s still a secure isolation chamber back at our colony,” she continues. “We can keep him there until we have a proper prison cell. Although the worm food idea is growing on me.”

Roy pokes Palmer with the toe of his boot and grins, and then my still-foggy brain remembers the important thing the Atom had let slip. “He’s got someone on the inside.”

They all turn to look at me, and Thea’s face pales slightly. “Oh my God, you’re bleeding from your _eyes_.”

“It’s a long story,” I say, “but if somebody at A.R.G.U.S. is in contact with the Atom, they’re going to know we captured him. We’re going to have to make our move sooner than we anticipated.”

“Felicity, we can’t do anything until you’re healthy again,” Oliver argues.

“I’m partially immune,” I fire back. “I’m going to be fine.”

“How did you get infected?” Thea interrupts, incredulous, but we both ignore her.

“Look, the least we can do is plan our attack. Get the gang together, lock me up in the _fish tank_ ,” I growl the last two words, and Oliver struggles to keep a straight face, “and figure out what we’re going to do. The virus could be out of my system as soon as tomorrow.”

“We’ll take Palmer,” Thea decides. “And we’ll be back later with Sin. But don’t think you’re getting out of explaining the immunity thing to me.”

Roy murmurs his assent, and then the three of us look to Oliver, who visibly deflates when he realizes he’s outvoted.

“Fine,” he concedes. “Be careful. I don’t imagine he’s going to be a cooperative inmate.”

We watch in silence as they heave Palmer to his feet, dragging him mercilessly behind them as they head back to their base.

“Time to get out of here?” Oliver asks me, softly, and I give him an eager smile.

“God, yes. I know we’ve spent two and a half years dealing with the literal undead, but I feel like hanging out in a graveyard is just _asking_ for trouble.”

He barks out a laugh, for the first time since the Corrupted attack, and reaches out to squeeze my good shoulder.

“You’re remarkable,” he tells me, and I roll my eyes at him good-naturedly.

“Thank you for remarking on it. And don’t touch! You’ll get sick.”

He shrugs and lowers his hand, allowing his gloved fingers to trail down my arm before entwining my fingers with his. “May as well make it worth it,” he offers, when I glare at him.

Like reopening a forgotten wound, walking together like this is an acute reminder of how much I’ve missed his touch for the last two days. “When all of this is over, we are locking ourselves in a room for a week so we have a chance to do _normal_ couple things... things like talking, and eating a nice dinner, not other things.” I wince and glance sideways at him, expecting him to smirk at my gaffe, but his expression is carefully blank. “What is it?”

“When all of this is over,” he repeats. “I’ve never thought that far ahead, that’s all.”

And because I know my obstinate, self-sacrificing oaf of a vigilante, I hear the words he does not say. _Before you, I never had a reason to plan for a future beyond this._ I squeeze his hand reassuringly, and after a moment, he squeezes back.

Maybe the end is on the horizon, and maybe we don’t know what state the world will be in when all is said and done.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the best weapon to carry into any war is a _purpose_.

And in loving Oliver, I know I’ve found mine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry (belated) Christmas! Tying together the loose ends in this story has been somewhat difficult, but I don't want to keep you waiting for this any longer. Still one or two chapters left to go, which will hopefully be done soon. 
> 
> I've been missing my love thatmasquedgirl lately due to us both having extremely busy lives, but I'm so grateful to bushlaboo who stepped up in my time of need and has done an amazing job. Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos and I hope you all have a safe and wonderful start to 2017. I'm so grateful for your support.


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